GIJoe SERE: Part 4
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: The Joes finally get a chance to pursue courts-martial proceedings against Walker and Broadview for the SERE training incidents. COMPLETE.
1. Interlude: Home

Interlude: Home

"It's so good to be home!" Cam popped the door open on her side of the Jeep Wrangler and got out before Charlie could help her out.

He refrained from rolling his eyes; all the way here from Staten Island, whenever they'd stopped somewhere to eat, at a gas station to fill up, whatever, he'd been careful to help her get out of the car; he didn't want her to hurt herself. She was now making a subtle point of letting him know she was fine and she didn't want him to hover.

Which was fine; he also knew that even though her village looked deserted, there were probably eyes watching them out of every window. They would recognize Cam—and since he'd shucked the military fatigues for his favorite button-down shirts and jeans and boots, knowing no one here in New York was going to ask him for his tribal registration—they would have recognized him as another Native American, and the medicine man and shamanic talismans he'd carefully arranged to hang outside of his shirt would tell them that although he wasn't Iroquois, he was a member of another Native American tribe, and a highly-regarded, high-status member at that. It would reinforce Cam's status to anyone who might have downgraded her after the fiasco with Adam Barefoot and her subsequent abrupt departure from the tribe.

He grabbed his one small bag from the back of the Jeep, carried it to her front step and deposited it there, then turned to help her with her duffel bag and backpack. He'd been gratified to find she traveled light too; her swords, flute, ballet shoes and the faded pink diary were pretty much the only items she had with her, and other than that she had several changes of clothes and one set of her fatigues and that was it.

The first thing she did was to empty her pack and take that diary, with the adoption paper carefully folded inside it, and tuck it into a metal ammo box that held some things she obviously considered personal. He looked at it, heart aching at the thought that she hadn't had enough in her life to fill even that small box, and determined that would change.

They'd taken the scenic (read: long) route to western New York, driving through towns and picturesque roadways, looking at and enjoying the glorious colors of autumn around them. The last time Cam had seen trees, they'd been in full green leaf; the hurricane that had traveled up the East Coast of the United States had delayed the fall riot of color. Now, as she stretched in the sun and enjoyed her freedom again, the scarlet, saffron, and ochre of the tree leaves around them reflected in her dancing eyes and happy laughter.

Her cottage was small, spartan; there was very little of the useless knickknacks and bric-a-brac that most women seemed to love to clutter their houses with. He liked that simplicity, the uncomplicated order, but as she turned on the small lamp in her bedroom and started to pull down the folding cot from the corner, he did see something they were going to have a problem with. "Uh, Cam. There's not enough room for both of us on that bed."

She gave him a single, startled glance. "I thought you'd sleep on this and I'd take the couch in the living room."

"I thought we'd sleep together. Part of the reason I was upset with Frank last night is because I was comfortable, that was the first time we'd been able to sleep together and I wanted it to last…a bit longer."

She stopped trying to unfold the cot and gave him her full attention. "Charlie, all that joking we were doing back in General Hawk's office aside, I understand that you said it because Shana and Allie were expecting to hear something like that, and not necessarily because you actually wanted to…to marry…someone like me. I know you like me, and I like you too, but I don't want you to think that I expect you to tie yourself down to…to a frigid—"

"Hold it right there." Charlie cupped her chin in his hands, placing his thumbs over her lips to silence the rest of what she'd been about to say. "I have never met another woman like you. You have been through so much, but you just get back up after you've been knocked down and you keep going. That takes guts and courage and it's not easy to find those qualities in a woman, much less another of the People. Yes, I know you are not of my people, but neither am I of yours, and yet we're all Native Americans together.

"Even after everything that's happened, after what you've been through not only at the hands of the military parting you from the only family you'd ever known at Osan, then your Aunt and Uncle, and then the Army again during SERE training and at Walker's hands and while in ICE detention, you can still find it in your heart to forgive, to reaffirm your commitment to give your life and serve a career in the army, for a country that largely hasn't shown anything but its bad side to you. It takes courage and commitment and I'm honored to be able to know you, and determined to make your life a part of mine so that for the rest of yours I can try to balance the wrongs that have already been dealt you." He took his thumbs away from her lips.

Her eyes were glittering with tears. "Charlie…please…I can never thank you enough for what you just said, but I don't want you to be here forever." He looked at her, hurt in his eyes, and she tried to explain as she started to shake with sobs. "Not…not like that. Charlie, please, it's…you deserve better, deserve more, than to be tied down to a useless half-woman, who pushes herself to be a warrior because I don't feel like a woman, because I'm physically incapable of being female. After knowing what I look like under the clothing, knowing I'm deformed and ugly and-"

"There you go again with that word. You aren't ugly. You're the most beautiful woman I know. Not the outside, but inside. I'm not that handsome myself, you know."

She stared at him round-eyed. "But…yes you are, and you deserve better than me…"

"I don't want better than you. I just want you." He leaned in and kissed her to stop her next words.

She resisted; he felt her stiffen with surprise, felt her tense. He waited, not deepening the kiss, not pulling back, waiting for her to decide if she wanted to try it or not. He wouldn't demand, Great Spirit, she'd had too many men already demand—and take—from her what should never have been theirs to take and only hers to give, too young and too often, and he would never, ever demand from her.

And then her lips softened, and he felt her tentatively reach out, wrap her arms around him, and he felt her body relax against his, and his heart sang as he deepened the kiss, intensified it, trying to make her feel the passion, the desire, for her that he felt. He understood that she'd been hurt by too many people in her life thus far and he was not going to hurt her again.

He could feel her relax against him but she wasn't really responding. She'd built a wall inside herself, shutting herself away from the core of her femininity, no doubt a result of the extended horrific abuse she'd suffered as a vulnerable young teenager trapped in a basement repeatedly brutalized. And he wondered if that was why she kept calling herself 'frigid'—had that idiot boy Adam Barefoot felt that wall inside her? Had he looked at it as something to be overcome by gentleness and care, or had he looked at it as frustrating his own desires and she was therefore unacceptable as a mate?

He allowed his hands to come up, caressing her tentatively, feeling her clothing slide against the smooth scar tissue of her torso. He could feel his own body straining toward her, yearning for her, but he was determined that he would break that wall down, release the fire and passion and desire he knew was inside her somewhere.

"Not here," he whispered. "Come out into the family room."

The folding army cot was much too small for her to sprawl and be comfortable on, but the bear fur would be more than adequate. Ignoring the packs that still waited to be attended to, he shoved them aside, stripped the couch of its cushions and pillows and arranged them on the floor, then spread the bearskin over top of them. When he turned around after finishing that operation, she was standing there uncertainly in the dim lamplight, undressed. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, as if still afraid of his reaction at seeing her body.

He took her hand, drew her down onto the bear fur, stretched her out on it. "Make yourself comfortable," he told her, his own voice husky with desire. "Lie still and enjoy this. Just feel. Let me do the work." She nodded, her eyes studying him uncertainly as she forced herself to relax; he felt touched that she would allow herself to become that vulnerable for anyone, even him, again, and it reinforced his belief that she was one of the strongest women he'd ever known… and reinforced his desire to not hurt her…..

They collapsed in a heap long moments later, gasping and spent and exhausted, tangled in the bear fur, all sweaty limbs and exhausted breathing. Charlie finally moved first, untangling him from her, peering down her body to make sure that she hadn't been hurt, no, she was fine, and he lay next to her, then grabbed the edge of the bear fur and pulled it over them. She lay still, dazed, panting as she came down off that incredible climax, then she opened her eyes. "You're right. I need a bigger bed."

Their laughter filled the little cottage.


	2. Chapter 61: Discussion

**Chapter 61: Discussion**

"So you want to re-present the court martial case."

Hawk nodded to Lieutenant General Johnson on screen. "Yes."

"Colonel Broadview and Corporal Walker?"

"Of course. What Colonel Broadview did was inexcusable, and there has to be some point of reference, some precedent, if this ever happens again. Something that documents what penalties are levied for what kind of 'off-manual abuse'."

"You don't know how to make my job easy, do you."

Hawk raised an eyebrow. "Lieutenant General Johnson, if either of us wanted 'easy' we'd have spent our lives flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant. I could have lived off my family and my inheritance as the spoiled, indulged, petted son of extremely wealthy parents. But we didn't, we understood that sometimes we'd have to make hard decisions if we went into the military, and we knew that when we accepted our positions. And if we wanted to avoid it we could retire—I have enough years under my belt, and I'm sure you do too. But you and I, we're not the kind to take the easy route."

Johnson sighed again. "You're right. As usual. Damn you." But there was no rancor in his voice. "All right. I'll contact the JAG office for permission for your team to re-present the paperwork. In the meantime—has Alex Cabot decided yet if she wants to go into the Army's JAG branch?"

"You know, in the middle of all this fuss I have not had a chance to ask her. So no, I don't know. They didn't seem to have a problem with her serving as Scarlett's co-trial counsel last time, so I don't know if they'll consider it necessary this time." Then it clicked. "You're not asking for them, you're asking because you really want her on our side."

Johnson grinned faintly. "Guilty as charged. Am I that transparent?"

"No, I'm just perceptive. There is a reason why I'm Hawk, after all."

Johnson laughed. "Okay, I'll give you that. Let your team know to prepare to re-present the case, and I'll have Broadview and Walker flown in. Are all witnesses and testimony present at your base? Are we going to have a repeat of what happened the last time?"

"No, we're not going to have a repeat of the prior deplorable incident, this I can promise you. The same rules and restrictions that were in place last time will be in place again, with a couple of exceptions; Walker will spend his time in my brig, more for his safety than my people's because I will tell you, even those personnel who didn't know Corporal Arlington personally can still find it in them to be disgusted at the behavior Walker evinced. Not a single one of my soldiers would have ever even thought about doing what Walker did and they don't, can't, think much of someone who would have stooped so low as to rape an innocent unarmed woman, and thereby gotten involved in a legal conflict that had absolutely nothing to do with him. You understand—you probably feel much the same way I do about Colonel Broadview abusing his power and allowing personal feelings to affect the way he did his job as a SERE instructor, and about his deliberately conspiring with a lower-ranked officer to disrupt a legal proceeding."

"Yes, I do. I agree with you wholeheartedly. You're sure Corporal Arlington isn't going to come into contact with him at all?"

"No, she won't, because I've given her medical leave. She's currently at her home in Western New York recovering from her ordeal of the last couple of months and trying to regain some emotional balance." Hawk decided not to mention that Cam had gone there with another soldier, and he certainly wasn't going to bring up what the two of them were most likely doing up there. He didn't need those mental images swirling around in his head, thank you very much. "So she's in Western New York on her reservation and I did inform her that I would be petitioning you for leave to re-present the case and she should make sure she was available to join us via phone conference or video conference, or if it becomes necessary she can be here in a few hours."

"All right. I just wanted to make sure—when I picked her up from Otero County and took her to Miramar, she seemed very quiet and withdrawn and depressed. Medical leave is good, I have no problems with that."

Hawk blew out his breath as he severed the connection with Johnson. Leaning a little further over his desk, he toggled the intercom from his desk phone, paged Allie and Shana, and waited for them to appear.

"You called Johnson? What's the news?" Shana plunked herself down on the end of his desk, her usual spot.

"I called Johnson. He's going to notify the JAG office and get them to send another military judge out to try the cases, so prepare to host Alex, Broadview and Walker and their JAG liaison Mitchell again. There will be a few changes this time; Walker will spend the entire time in the brig, no exceptions; I will not have him wandering around the base. There's enough negative sentiment here for him that I'm not going to set him up as a target for everyone to take potshots at."

"Why General Hawk, we wouldn't dream of it! That would be…unprofessional."

"Yes, it would, but you guys are human and outrage against him and what he did is still running high. You girls had a clearly-defined area reserved for yourselves which my guys respected, and they had a clearly-defined area which you respected. And Walker violated that, in the worst way possible for the worst reasons imaginable, and the guys here are taking that very personally, as a smear on the honor of the male population of this base. And don't tell me you've forgiven and forgotten because I know for a fact that none of you have used that studio since the incident."

"No, we haven't. We…just couldn't." Allie shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I know that it's been cleaned, the floor scrubbed and repolished, the mirrors have been replaced and everything seems normal, but we all know something bad happened there, something that should never have happened, and we just feel uncomfortable about going in there. I can't explain it, you just have to take our word for it on this one."

"Snake Eyes and I are thinking of switching rooms; we'll set up our dojo in that room and use the former dojo for the girls' only workout room. The peace and silence and quiet of the dojo will hopefully balance out the bad atmosphere, and eventually the aura will clear."

It all sounded like a lot of spiritual mumbo-jumbo to Clayton, but Shana and Snake Eyes were in tune with the spiritual practices of the far east, so if they said burning incense in that room and meditating in it would clear the atmosphere, he would trust them. "Have you been in touch with Alex? Is she going to be available for this court-martial?"

"Of course she is. She wants Walker to pay for what he did almost as much as she wants to get Broadview. She really wants to get Broadview for calling ICE and tipping them off to Cam's undocumented status, but we haven't been able to definitely trace the call back to him. We checked base records for phone calls made that week, but none of those calls were to ICE unless he called a third party and had them call, and we're not even going to bother asking ICE who called them—we know we're not going to get an answer." Allie made a disgusted face.

"Johnson wanted to know if she'd given any more thought to joining the JAG branch."

"That I don't know. She said she was keeping her options open but I think Cam's entire unfair situation the last few months has turned her interest to immigration law and the unfair treatment that undocumented people like Cam, who are just missing a piece of paper, are getting from the whole system. And I have to say I agree with her there, just because ICE was missing a piece of paper wasn't a reason to put her in prison, in solitary confinement no less, subject her to unimaginable deprivation and neglect her emotional and physical well-being. I understand that being 'illegal' means you don't get certain rights, but human rights belong to everyone and ICE didn't have the right to do what they did." Shana sighed. "And what Alex told me of what Charlie went through down there makes me mad. He and Cam are Native Americans, there's nothing the least bit illegal about either of them."

Clayton nodded. "So you want to listen in while I tell Cam the news that we're re-presenting the case?"

"Sure." Allie nodded.

"I want to know how she's doing." Shana nodded.

Allie eyed her friend with a mischievous smile. "You want to know _how_ she's doing or you want to know _what_ she's doing? With Charlie specifically?"

Shana gave her an offended look. "I thought it might be nice to tell Liv to tell Melinda the surgery was successful and Cam's made a _full_ recovery." She stressed the word full.

"Hey." The estrogen in the room was getting a bit much for Clayton; they seemed to have forgotten he was even there. "Since when are we on a first-name basis with half the NYPD?"

"Hey, you started it," Shana grinned unrepentantly. "You're on very, very intimate terms with one particular cop."

Allie poked her. "Oh, and did you know Clayton's going to be going on vacation in about two months?"

Shana pretended to look shocked. "Really? A vacation? I didn't even know he knew what the word meant!"

"Ladies…" Clayton warned.

"A little birdie told me he's planning to take a trip home."

"And would this little birdie have any idea whether he's going to have company?"

"_Ladies…_" A little more thunder in his voice.

"Oh, yeah. He's already told Courtney to make sure the Hummer is equipped for a road trip north in early December because his companion wasn't going to be able to fly and he was going to take the 'scenic route' home—"

"_**Sergeants**_!" Now it was General Hawk talking, and Allie and Shana subsided, though not without a sidelong look at each other that told Hawk they'd pick up that particular thread of conversation once they were out of his presence. It worked, actually; this way it wouldn't be a shock to Dash and Conrad when he told them he was going to take a month away from base. Since becoming the head of the G.I. Joe project he could count on one hand the number of times he'd left base for longer than a couple of weeks, and here he was, planning on taking a whole month…if Dash didn't hear it from Allie first he likely _would_ fall over from shock; Clayton liked Dash, but privately thought it was a good thing he was with Allie because Allie kept him flexible about things like this.

He dialed a number now, listened to it ring. And ring. And ring. He was just about to hang up when someone finally answered. "Hello?"

It was not the voice he expected to hear. "Is this…Jennifer? Jennifer Aiennatha?"

"Yes it is. Is this Cam's commanding officer?"

"Yeah, I'm trying to reach her…is she there?"

Jennifer cleared her throat but he could hear the smile in her voice. "She's not here at the moment, but she is here in Western New York, if that's what you're asking. She hasn't disappeared again."

"Thank goodness." Relief, then curiosity. "So…if she's not at home, where is she at the moment?"

"I talked Charlie into taking her on a day trip to Buffalo."

"Buffalo?' Clayton blinked in startlement. "Why Buffalo? Isn't that kind of far away from the reservation?"

"Thirty miles." Jennifer sounded cheerful.

"Um…why?"

"She came to the conclusion last night that she needs a bigger bed. But her bedroom's so small that she wouldn't have room to dance if she got a bigger one, and Charlie flatly refused to take away her dancing space. So as a housewarming gift the tribe's putting up an addition to her house—a bigger bedroom, so her old bedroom can be her dance studio. And if she knew about it she'd put her foot down and refuse, so I instructed Charlie to take her on a day trip and I called in every person who can carry a beam and hammer a nail so we can try to at least get the frame and walls up before she gets back. If that much is done she won't be able to refuse."

Clayton closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the two women sitting in chairs opposite his desk; if he so much as looked at Shana and Allie doubled over in silent laughter holding each other to keep from falling out of their chairs he was not going to be able to keep a straight face either. _I guess that means they can tell Melinda she's well on her way to a full recovery, _he thought, and smiled a little at the thought. _About damn time she got some pleasure out of life; it's been too hard on her already._ Aloud, he said, "If you could please ask Cam to call me when she gets back, I would appreciate it."

"If it's urgent I could call her and have her come back—"

"No, no, it's not that urgent. As long as she calls me sometime within the next three days or so."

"She'll be back before then. I don't think we could wait that long for her to see the surprise. We're not only going to build that bedroom addition, but we also have a bed to put in it. And it is plenty big enough for her and that man-mountain of hers to sleep in. Not that I think they're going to be doing much sleeping." Jennifer sounded absurdly cheerful. "All right. I have to get back to the building. Is there anything else?"

"No, no, that will be all. Thanks, Jennifer." Clayton's sides hurt. "I'll talk to you later." He hung up.

Shana and Allie's laughter exploded, filling his little office with merriment. He wasn't doing much better; he wondered if it was possible to pull a muscle in his side from laughing so hard. "I guess you can tell Melinda that Cam's making a full recovery," he finally gasped out.

"Yes, I guess we can." Shana sat back in her chair. "Oh my. I haven't laughed like this in ages. Wait till I tell Courtney. And Frank."

Allie stared at her. "Shana, you wouldn't."

"Of course I would. Charlie can be too serious for his own good, Frank tends to have a…relaxing … effect on him."

"And Courtney will relax Cam. She's too serious for her own good sometimes too." Allie got up. "Come on, I want to tell Dash and then I want to call Alex and Liv and Melinda—"

Clayton cleared his throat. "Excuse me." Both Allie and Shana turned to look at him. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Oh. Permission to leave, General Hawk sir?" Perfect poker face.

"Granted."

He'd never seen them disappear quite so fast.


	3. Chapter 62: CourtMartial

**Chapter 62: Court-Martial**

"All rise. This Court-Martial will now come to order."

Allie and Clayton had set aside the largest conference room on base for this court-martial, and it still wasn't enough. Half of the base that was not currently on duty was here, and the other half who was on duty were probably wishing they weren't so they could attend.

He sat in the first row, right behind Shana and Alex at the trial counsel's table; both women were dressed in military Class B dress uniforms—he'd wager Alex had borrowed either Courtney's or Allie's—and they were indistinguishable except for the fiery red hair under one cover and the blond locks under the other.

Charlie had brought Cam back to base two days before the court-martial was about to start, and Clayton had been astonished by the change in her after only a week with Charlie on the reservation. She seemed more relaxed and happy, she smiled more, and now it was clear to anyone who maybe hadn't known about her relationship with Charlie that she was very much in love. And it wasn't hard for a perceptive person to figure out that love was returned; they had passed Broadview in the halls going to and from the mess, and Broadview had glared at Cam. She'd gone impassive, face still; Charlie had quickly stepped between her and Broadview, took her hand and ushered her down another hall, with a last look back at Broadview, being escorted down the hall by Duke, and according to Duke that glare had promised a world of hurt if Broadview so much as touched a hair on her head again. "Or a potent Indian curse," Duke told Hawk later. "Seriously, Hawk, if Broadview hurts Cam again I don't think we can be absolutely sure Charlie isn't going to take some kind of revenge on him, and it's not going to be pretty."

"Don't tell me that. I don't want to think about it." But he did change Broadview's quarters so that he was on the same level as the mess hall and nowhere near the women's wing where Cam was staying.

Broadview sat with JAG Lieutenant Mitchell on the table at left; Walker sat on the other side, along with his JAG officer, who'd introduced himself somewhat nervously to Hawk as Lieutenant Preston. Hawk had taken instant pity on the guy; Preston was older and, according to his credentials, had been with the JAG corps for about ten years, but even he looked shaken when he saw Cam's DD2911, detailing the locations and extent of the injuries Cam had suffered from Walker's brutal attack. "Please inform her that I am pleased she's all right and making a full recovery," he added, completely spontaneously, at the conclusion of the initial debriefing and paperwork review.

"I will. Thank you," Alex had said, and the man had nodded, once, simply, and left. Alex had watched him go thoughtfully, then told Hawk, "He's a professional, through and through, and he's not going to throw the case, but I get the feeling he's going to do exactly what the job requires and not a single bit more. His heart isn't in this defense."

"It's a mere formality anyway," Hawk grumped. "I don't even know why we're going through this farce. He was caught in the act, for Chrissakes, he should just plead guilty and accept the punishment."

"We're 'going through with this farce' because he has to be tried with Broadview if we want to get them both on the conspiracy charge." Shana clarified it for him. "Separately, the military judge could just find Walker guilty of aggravated assault and rape and forcible sodomy, and just find Broadview guilty of cruelty and maltreatment and maiming and assault but if we want to get both of them on conspiracy we have to try them together."

And so they were here in front of the military judge that had been assigned to this court martial, Judge Martin Daniels, and the long-delayed court-martial was about to begin. Hawk viewed the whole thing with mixed feelings, now; in contrast to his earlier single-minded determination to get both of them for what they'd done, not only to Cam but also for the stain the two men had put on the honor of the Army he served, now he was torn between just wanting to dismiss the whole thing and get on with life and wanting to see Broadview and Walker punished for what they'd done. Walker, in particular.

"This court-martial is hereby convened by special court-martial convening order RA06763875. The accused, Colonel Thomas Broadview and Corporal Anthony Walker, are present, as is defense counsel JAG Lieutenants Mitchell and Preston. Accuser General Clayton Abernathy is here, as well as testifying main witness Corporal Cameron Arlington. Testifying witnesses are not here but their testimony can be read in court." Shana stood and read off the list of names; the members of the 82nd who had given Allie their written reports of the SERE training, the written testimony of Shawn Miller, Kenny Ryder, and the handful of other trainees who had seen, and protested, Broadview's treatment of Cam. "The prosecution is now ready to proceed in the case of United States v Colonel Thomas Broadview and Corporal Anthony Walker."

Since it was a special court-martial, there were five members allowed on the decision panel. Whether by sheer luck or just good timing, a team of five Joes, mostly communications experts, had just come in from an extended-assignment mission to help set up several forward operations bases for secret military facilities and had been unaware of the conflict raging on base surrounding the events of the last two months. Shana had taken Airwave, Breaker, Dial Tone, Mainframe and Steam Roller aside, told them they were going to be required to sit as members of a court martial, and forbidden anyone to talk about it before those five. There had been some grumbling—the five Joes had been gone for almost the whole summer and had been looking forward to being able to relax and catch up with the rest of base; but Shana told them the charges were serious and she would really appreciate it if they could just hold off for one more week, and she understood they were tired and she would go easy on them in the gym. Hawk suspected that this last offer was the deal-breaker for Mainframe and Airwave, at least; they didn't have as good reflexes in hand-to-hand and having Scarlett promise to 'go easy' was an offer they couldn't refuse.

"All members please rise." The five Joes stood as one, raising their right hands as Scarlett raised hers. "Do you swear that you will faithfully and impartially try, according to the evidence, your conscience and the laws applicable to trials by court-martial the cases of the accused now before this court, and that you will not disclose or discover the vote or opinion of any particular member of the court-martial upon the findings or sentence unless required to do so in due course of law, so help you God?"

Five voices chorused, "I do."

The judge tapped the gavel on the table behind which he sat. "Be seated please. The court martial is assembled."

Shana stood. "In the case of United States versus Colonel Thomas Broadview, the general nature of the charges in this case are that Colonel Thomas Broadview, during the course of his duties as a SERE instructor at Camp Mackall, Fort Bragg, did abuse and maltreat Corporal Cameron Arlington, a trainee under his care, which abuse came close to costing Corporal Arlington her life." There was a look of absolute shock on the five Joes' faces; Hawk reflected that Scarlett must have threatened a lot of people with some really hard workouts to keep it quiet; she obviously wanted to get Broadview and Walker and she was going to make damn sure that nothing would interfere with the court martial.

"In the case of United States versus Corporal Anthony Walker, the general nature of the charges are that Corporal Anthony Walker conspired with the above-named co-defendant to prevent Corporal Cameron Arlington from testifying, by trespassing on a clearly-marked gender-specific portion of the base and assaulting Corporal Arlington, causing unconsciousness during which he raped and sodomized her before attempting to force her to perform oral sex."

Hawk noticed that Mainframe looked like he was going to be physically sick. Maybe keeping this a total surprise wasn't a good thing? Then he saw Scarlett's eyes flick over to him, and an unspoken question; _are you going to be okay?_ And then Mainframe nodded, straightened up in his chair and returned his attention to the trial, and Clayton knew that whatever his problems with it, it was personal and not professional and he wasn't going to let it interfere with his job.

Judge Daniels spoke now, following the age old formula for court martial. "Members of the court-martial, at an earlier session the accused was arraigned and entered the following pleas: in the matter of United States v Colonel Broadview, on Charge I, cruelty and maltreatment of a subordinate, not guilty; on Charge II, maiming, not guilty; Charge III, assault to commit grievous bodily harm, not guilty; Charge IV, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, not guilty, Charge V, reckless endangerment, not guilty. Charge VI, obstruction of the investigation into his actions, not guilty. Charge VII, conspiracy with Corporal Walker to disrupt these proceedings, is not a charge punishable by court martial except insofar as it has direct bearing on the outcome of the proceedings, and the members will disregard the last charge as it is my responsibility to make a ruling of conspiracy upon hearing all evidence presented. Now, in the matter of United States versus Corporal Walker, the charges are as follows; Charge I, rape by using physical violence utilizing aggravated assault, not guilty; Charge II, rape by causing grievous bodily harm utilizing aggravated assault, not guilty; Charge III, rape by rendering another unconscious by means of an aggravated assault, not guilty; Charge IV, conspiracy with Colonel Broadview to disrupt the court's proceedings will be disregarded by the members as it is the military judge's responsibility to make a ruling regarding those charges after all the evidence has been presented. Now, will the prosecution make an opening statement?"

"Yes. Members of the jury, as regards the case of United States v. Colonel Broadview it is our intent to prove that, in his position as a SERE instructor, Colonel Broadview had a clear responsibility to ensure the health, safety and well-being of the trainee Corporal Cameron Arlington. We have all been through SERE training, we know it is physically hard and stressful and we know it is designed to be, it is supposed to test our limits and introduce to us the reality of what may happen if we are ever captured by an opposing force. However, there are clear rules laid out in the manual for SERE instructors detailing what they can and cannot do, and the health of the soldier is at all times to be taken into consideration during the 21 day course. It was therefore a clear breach in instructor protocols and officer conduct for Colonel Broadview to have nearly caused Corporal Arlington permanent brain damage ad possible death by the actions he took during her training which caused her grievous bodily harm and put her in direct danger of her life.

"As regards the case of United States v. Corporal Anthony Walker, we intend to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Corporal Walker did knowingly and willfully trespass upon a gender-specific area of base in clear violation of established protocols and approached Corporal Arlington with a sexual offer. As they are the same rank, the rules against fraternization between officers do not apply—such rules are in place to govern interactions between subordinate and commander, and while Corporal Arlington could technically be considered Corporal Walker's superior, she having completed SERE training while he was given a bad conduct discharge, they are both the same rank and pay grade.

"Corporal Arlington clearly indicated her refusal to accept the sexual offer made by Corporal Walker, who then commenced an assault which rendered Corporal Arlington unconscious for most of the rape that followed; she recovered consciousness in time to prevent forcible oral rape, which she then ended by a self-defense assault upon Corporal Walker that resulted in his incapacity to perform the culminating act. At this point they were interrupted by an authorized visitor to the base, New York Police Detective Olivia Benson, who witnessed the final portion of the attack and was subsequently assaulted by Corporal Walker. The attack was interrupted by my co-trial-counsel Private Alexandra Cabot, who drew a weapon and ended the assault, then notified base authorities and maintained control of the situation until command personnel arrived."

_Shana's been spending too much time with Alex, they even sound alike. I wonder if I should send her through the JAG training with Alex? I wonder if she'd consider it?_ Hawk mused as he took in the reactions of the member panel_. Look at them._ _That's pretty effective, telling them right off the bat that Walker was caught in the act. There's absolutely no doubt they're going to find him guilty._

Judge Daniels turned to the defense table. "Does the defense want to make a statement?"

Lieutenant Preston shook his head. "Defense will make its statement after the prosecution has rested."

Lieutenant Mitchell stood. "On behalf of my client, Colonel Broadview, I would like to make a statement. My client is a decorated veteran who has served ten years in the US Army, and has performed his duties so honorably that he was then entrusted to teach incoming trainees how to conduct themselves with similar honor. He has been a SERE instructor for three years now, and there has never been a whisper of complaint from any of his former trainees."

Out the corner of his eye Hawk saw Alex sit straight up, suddenly, staring at Mitchell, then grabbed a pen and scribbled a note on the yellow legal pad in front of her.

"Everyone knows SERE is hard. It can be harder on women than men because women are physically weaker than men, and so a woman's perception of 'cruelty and maltreatment' may not in fact be 'cruelty'; it is a matter of individual perception, and individual perception should not be the sole factor in ending a decorated officer's career. In addition, SERE Level C training is not a requirement for women, certainly not a requirement for Corporal Arlington's military operating specialty of support for a ranger regiment. Corporal Arlington's commanding officer may have suggested that she take it but it was not a requirement; this was voluntary and non-mandatory. It was her own choice to come to the training and she should have been fully prepared to encounter hardship."

_Oh, so the old 'she asked for it' is going to be dragged in here._ Hawk knew he should have expected it but it still disgusted him.

"The whole purpose to SERE training is to expose the trainees to the reality of life in a survival situation, to introduce to them the idea that sometime in their careers they may find themselves on the wrong side of the front lines and in the hands of the enemy. The instructors' purpose is to impress upon the trainee the types of tactics they may be subject to, and to get the trainee to understand tactics and techniques to avoid having their resistance broken. These resistance-breaking techniques are considered by many, including the popular press, to be cruel and unnecessary but they were developed by decorated war veterans who had themselves undergone the experience and had been successful in beating it. It is not unheard-of for soldiers to be pushed up to and past their 'breaking point' during this training; Corporal Arlington was hardly the first, and will certainly not be the last, but the techniques Colonel Broadview used were techniques outlined in the instructor's guideline manuals and have been approved for use in the SERE training by the US Army for thousands of trainees over the years, and no one has ever died or been permanently harmed by them."


	4. Chapter 63: Hawk's Testimony

**Chapter 63: Hawk's Testimony**

Shana stood after that little monologue and said, "The defense calls as its first witness the accuser General Clayton Abernathy." Clayton got up, tugged the front of his dress jacket into order, and took his place behind the small table that served as a witness stand, then raised his right hand as Shana did the same. "General Clayton Abernathy, do you swear that that the evidence you give in these cases now in hearing shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

"I do." Clayton dropped his hand and sat down.

Shana cleared her throat. "Please state your name, rank, organization, and station for the record."

"Clayton M. Abernathy, Major General—" he didn't often use the full title, 'General' was easier to address him by on a daily basis, but that was what the second star on his collar was for— "currently commander at Fort Wadsworth military base for a classified project codenamed G.I. Joe."

"Do you know the accused?"

Of course he did. "Yes."

"Please point to the accused and state their names for the record."

Clayton pointed to the defense table. "Colonel Thomas Broadview, SERE instructor based at Camp Mackall out of Fort Bragg. Corporal Anthony Walker, probationary recruit for the G.I. Joe project, formerly of the 75th Ranger Regiment, 1st Battalion."

Shana raised her voice. "Let the record show that the witness has indicated the accused when stating their names. Now, General Abernathy, please give us an exact accounting of events as you remember them."

"I first met Corporal Arlington as her group got off the transport at Fort Bragg," Clayton began, and proceeded from there to tell the story of their arrival at Camp Mackall, the attempt to exclude her from training, his decision to step up and offer so that she wouldn't have to wait, the subsequent formation of their SERE team. He detailed for them Walker's continued persecution of Cam, the incident with the broken flute and, in more detail, the footlocker incident and Walker's protestations that it had been 'a joke' and that had resulted in his failure and discharge from the training.

He told them about Broadview insisting that Cam strip in the classroom along with everyone else; he wished he didn't have to tell everyone about her physical condition, but as he glanced at her, sitting in the front row of chairs designated for witnesses, her eyes met his and he saw she understood his conflict, and the small smile on her face told him she was all right with it. He still tried to be delicate about it, trying not to use harsh ugly terms as he described what she'd looked like, the extensive physical scarring, and particularly Broadview's reaction to the scars.

He told the court enough about their S&E week for them to see the distinct pattern of aversion Broadview had developed; Cam's cleverness at setting up ambushes that, had this been a real exercise, would have taken Broadview out several times over; how, despite this, he still found faults—and the unfairness inherent in taking more points from Cam than from the others. He described the incident with the pig, how Cam had almost-singlehandedly killed it, how Halloran had stepped forward and granted them a 'holiday' partially due to the stiflingly unhealthy heat.

He told the court, with steel in his voice, about the conversation they'd 'overheard' Broadview having with Masters, who was heading up the hunt team, including the names he'd called them; Demo as a 'black guy', Ryder as a skinny carrot-top, Hawk himself as an 'old man' and Cam as a 'little girl dressing up in her father's clothes', a viewpoint he'd reiterated when their team had finally been captured for the Resistance portion of the course.

"He tied her at the end of our line, and all the way back he kept running into her, sending her stumbling off-course and then yanking her arm hard to pull her back in line, but he'd use too much force and she would stumble too far in the other direction and he'd yank her back."

"In your opinion, was this deliberate?" Scarlett's tone was matter-of-fact.

"Yes, it was."

She nodded. "Proceed."

He told them about arriving at Camp Mackall's stockade, about there not being a pair of shoes there to fit Cam's feet, and he knew some of the anger he felt over that crept into his voice but he couldn't help it. He saw shock in the faces of the five Joes sitting on the members panel; something as basic as footwear wasn't something that would have been hard to acquire in Cam's size, and she could have been allowed to wear her own boots. In a real POW situation, the enemy would most likely allow them to wear their own military issue footwear anyway. He described in a flat voice how Broadview had repeatedly used derogatory terms to address Cam; how she'd simply absorbed it with no sign of offense as being part of the course.

"I don't know exactly what happened to her in Phase I of the RTL," Hawk said now. "When we caught Walker in the act of raping her, his answers when we questioned her indicated that something Broadview did to her during that portion of the course triggered a flashback, courtesy of her as-yet-undiagnosed complex post traumatic stress disorder—CPTSD—and when my doctor examined her upon termination of the training exercise he found that she had sustained internal injuries from what he guessed was excessive use of the abdominal slap, resulting in ruptured internal blood vessels. According to tradition at this point she would have been nude and when he observed blood on her legs he simply washed it off under the supposition that she had begun her cycle." Jesus, these panel members were total strangers and they had to hear the most intimate details about Cam's body—they were practically victimizing her all over again. He could see the tension in Cam's shoulders, the way she flinched—barely perceptibly, but she did react—whenever one of the panel members looked at her. It was a small measure of comfort that Charlie was sitting in the chair directly behind her, one hand resting comfortingly on her shoulder; and Olivia sat beside her as a witness also, holding her hand.

Scarlett interrupted him again. "So according to accounts she had a CPTSD flashback in Phase i?"

"That was what I heard, yes."

"And Broadview did not cease training, nor attempt to seek mental health assistance from a professional? He just continued on as though nothing had happened?"

"Yes."

She nodded. "Please continue."

He told them about his own stint as Broadview's captive, including the conversation he'd had with Broadview during his own Phase I interrogation. "He referred to her as a 'chink cunt' and told me that I—and my team—would ultimately fail because she would not get through the Resistance portion of the course. At which point I told him that if he stepped outside the letter of the exercise guidelines I would bring charges against him on Corporal Arlington's behalf. Broadview ended the phase I and returned me to the outdoor POW pens immediately concluding this exchange."

He went on to tell them now about the soldiers of the 82nd bringing Cam back from PT on a day when it was 107 degrees outside, told them about the soldiers bringing her back barely responsive, about his realization that she was hyperthermic and unresponsive and if something wasn't done quickly she would sustain permanent brain damage or die. About Corporal Tibbs, who had brought a hose and sprayed her down, bringing her body temperature down in time to avoid long-term complications, about the camp's CMO deciding to take her inside and into 'solitary' for medical observation since she woke up and clearly indicated she did not want to cease the exercise.

And then the next day the rains started—rain from the approaching hurricane, although they hadn't known that was what it was at the time. And Broadview had taken Cam out to PT, bringing her back nude in full body shackles, crawling as best she could on the end of the dog leash—and he could see anger deep in the eyes of the five Joes sitting on the panel as their eyes traveled involuntarily to the quiet dark-haired young woman sitting in the front row, and he knew they were seeing her as he'd seen her that afternoon.

And then he told them, anger in his voice—he couldn't help it now—about that one moment, when seeing what Broadview had done to Cam had brought all of the trainees together, had finally bound them into a cohesive whole as they united in their disgust at what Broadview had done to her. And how Broadview had whipped out that dull little penknife and hacked off her hair, handful by handful. He told about Corporal Carter, the soldier from the 82nd who'd told Broadview he'd made his point, to stop…and Broadview had kept going, and now as he talked Clayton saw a small spark, somewhere down deep in the judge's eyes; a flicker only, gone as quickly as Clayton saw it, but it was there; loathing. Disgust. And then he saw it again as he recounted Masters' gentleness in trying to get the exhausted woman out of the mud, and Broadview's kick when she didn't move fast enough. He told them how Masters had defied Broadview's unspoken order and released the full body shackles, then helped Cam into the pen to lie down comfortably.

He told the now-silent room how he'd taken off his shirt and fed it through the chain link just so she would have something to wear, some kind of protection against the driving almost-horizontal hurricane-swept rain; how they'd spent that last night at Camp Mackall trying to share body heat and stay warm; how, the morning after, Cam had seemed a little better and they had escaped because the weather had been getting steadily worse, Cam had identified it as a hurricane and she had also been sure that Broadview wasn't going to bring her in from it and the trainees had decided they were going to try and escape together rather than see Broadview leave her out in the hurricane by herself. He recounted how they'd escaped, using the fact that the rain had turned the mock POW camp into a muddy soup, and escaped out into the forest. "She knew we had to head northwest, she identified direction by looking at moss on the trees and we set out to find the airlift site. We grabbed a vine off a nearby tree and tied it between us, then everyone grabbed it in one hand so we wouldn't lose anyone and we headed out, and I remember that the ground was very wet and muddy and my shoes kept slipping, and that was when I realized she didn't have shoes. She hadn't been given a pair that fit, and she hadn't had the POW uniform we all had since the second day of camp. She was running through the woods wearing my top and nothing else."

He went on to tell the court-martial panel about the tree that had fallen, and Cam's desperate sacrifice to keep them all from being struck by that tree. "She threw herself down the hill and took us all with her. I don't know if we would have all gotten out of the way in time if she hadn't; I don't think any of us would have had the courage to just let go and fall that way. But we all ended at the bottom of the hill bruised but alive, and the tree came down without hitting any of us." He told them about Cam having knocked herself out, about his inspection and discover of her bruised ribs, and his decision not to try and get any further; they'd made camp under the fallen tree, broken branches out to form a little hollow cave with the fallen branches and the trunk, and they'd waited out the storm.

He closed his eyes to fight the sick feeling as he described how Cam had tried to cauterize the cut on her foot with a burning branch; it had been only partially successful, and he'd built a rough sort of stretcher to carry her when the hurricane passed. And they'd been back on the path toward the airlift site when Lady Jaye and Spirit had found them. He described the diagnosis of Cam's injuries that Stretcher had put together as they returned to Camp Mackall; how he'd discovered that Cam had been bleeding internally since the first day of SERE training, the steps he'd taken to try and drain the internal hemorrhaging from her abdomen , and how when they'd gotten back they found the base had lost power and it had been decided to keep Cam on the plane; Colonel Potter had placed his supplies and expertise at their disposal, and that night Cam had undergone emergency surgery. And Hawk had officially suspended the training activities pending a full inquiry.

He described the consensus the trainees had come to in the barracks, they way they'd thrown their approval behind Hawk's decision to pursue a possible court martial, the other members of the 82nd who'd backed them, and his decision to have Cam transferred to his unit under his care, and his contacting Shelton Dixon to do so. "Shelton told me that when he first put it out on base that Cam was going to SERE-C training, one of his soldiers said that he should wait until he had two women before he sent her, but there weren't any other women ready to go so he just sent Cam. And Sergeant Masters of the 82nd said he'd seen Broadview display some of what he called 'questionable behavior' in front of other female recruits but had never dared do anything overtly until Cam, because there were no other women and some of the trainees in our group didn't like her much to begin with."

Alex was scribbling furiously on her legal pad and Shana was paying close attention to what she was writing when Mitchell rose from his chair for the cross-examination. "So from your narrative, we can gather that from the very beginning Colonel Broadview evinced a clear dislike of Corporal Arlington?"

"Yes."

"Can you point out what specific incident led you to that conclusion?"

"It was all cumulative, from the moment he tried to exclude her from training, the fact that he tried to make excuses for Warren and Blasetti when they stole an item of Cam's property and instigated a fight at Camp Mackall and Colonel Broadview protested Colonel Halloran's levying punishment on Warren and Blasetti by saying that Blasetti was injured and that Corporal Arlington was 'dressed outlandishly—"

"'Dressed outlandishly? How?"

"She was dressed in what would be considered traditional Native American clothing."

Mitchell smiled himself. "You would have to admit that it could be considered an unusual sight at a military facility and the soldier who chose to wear it would come in for a certain amount of teasing."

If his intent was for the members of the panel to smile with him, it didn't work. These were Joes, and they had become used to seeing Charlie striding around base in his mix of half-military half-native garb, and had come to accept it as a matter of personal preference, as they accepted Snake Eyes going everywhere with his swords and pitch-black second-skin suits, and Scarlett with her bodysuits.

However, it _would_ be considered rather unusual at a regular military base, except for one thing. "Corporal Arlington was off-duty and therefore permitted to dress in any way she liked. She had chosen a spot far enough away from the main common areas of the camp that her manner of dress should have come under scrutiny by no one, and Warren and Blasetti chose to come and disrupt her free time, they were not compelled or ordered to come and watch her practice." He hardened his voice. "Such behavior was something that I would have expected to see from an elementary schoolyard bully, not an enlisted member of the US Army."

Mitchell brought them back to his line of questioning. "Were there any other instances that led you to the conclusion that Colonel Broadview did not 'like' Corporal Arlington?"

"In Base Commander Hilton's office after the incident where Corporal Arlington was locked in her footlocker for eighteen hours by Corporals Walker and Harper, Base Commander Hilton pointed out that he had not read the files of the trainees prior to their arrival; he said he did not want to unfairly bias himself or his staff against any of the trainees. I remember thinking that he didn't have to; Colonel Broadview was already unfairly biased against her. Base Commander Hilton called Corporal Arlington's commanding officer and I was allowed to sit in on that conversation. At that time Hilton informed Dixon that he was discharging him from the training and I recommended to Dixon that he send Walker here, to my base. He had a good record and was by all accounts an excellent soldier except for his tunnel-vision bias against women being in the Army, and I hoped that bringing him here and having my people show him by example that women were just as capable as men, he might put aside his regrettable bias because in every other way I had considered him to be an excellent soldier."

"You considered him an excellent soldier even after he locked Corporal Arlington in her footlocker for eighteen hours."

Hawk said tightly, "I have my own regrettable tendencies, Lieutenant Mitchell, and one of those is to try and give people the benefit of doubt, to give them a second chance. Yes, I regret that now; after seeing what my decision cost Corporal Arlington, I will regret that for the rest of my life."

"No further questions." Mitchell ended his questioning abruptly.


	5. Chapter 64: Medical Testimony

**Chapter 64: Medical Testimony**

Judge Daniels spoke firmly. "Thank you, General Abernathy, you may be excused. Please remember not to discuss your testimony or knowledge of this case with anyone but counsel. If anyone approaches you please inform trial counsel." Clayton nodded as he got up and headed back to his seat.

Shana stood. "The prosecution calls as its next witness Ed Steen, Emergency medical officer." Stretcher was duly sworn in and seated. "Please describe for the court-martial panel what Corporal Arlington's medical condition was like when you first examined her."

"I first saw her when we picked up General Abernathy and his training team from the North Carolina woods right after the hurricane. Upon initial visual inspection, I noticed she was unable to walk due to a badly-gashed foot, her arms and legs were welted and scratched, no doubt from running through the woods in a hurricane; there were some shallow cuts on the back of her neck from what General Abernathy identified as souvenirs of Colonel Broadview's haircutting operation; she wore no underclothing, no shoes, and no pants; her sole item of clothing was an oversized scrub top which, I am given to believe, was General Abernathy's.

"Upon closer physical inspection I found that her foot was in the beginning stages of a developing infection; the cuts on her legs were superficial but needed to be cleaned in order to prevent complications; and she had never been properly treated after the childhood accident that had scarred sixty percent of her skin due to the near-total occlusion of her external physical geography, and as I checked her for any broken bones it became evident that she had badly-bruised ribs from a combination of what General Abernathy told me had come from both a kick from Colonel Broadview and a collision with a sapling during their attempt to evade a falling tree in the North Carolina woods.

"I then started a thorough internal analysis and found that her medical condition was much worse than would have seemed upon my initial analysis. Sometime during the course of SERE training she had sustained multiple blows to her lower abdominal area which caused a rupture of the remaining subcutaneous blood vessels, resulting in extensive internal bleeding, and the hemorrhage was unable to exit her body due to the near-total occlusion of her vaginal opening from the burn scarring on her torso. General Abernathy mentioned that he thought she had begun her period from the traces of blood he'd seen on her legs around day two of the Resistance portion of the SERE course, but her overall physical condition would have precluded her body's attempt to carry out such normal functions; her normal body weight should have been about one-twenty-five or one-thirty and at the time I saw her she was one-ten. Maybe."

He paused for a moment to let that sink in, then went on. "Due to hypopigmentation from her burn scarring, her skin did not show visible bruises but there was extensive subcutaneous tissue damage from multiple impacts. Her blood pressure was dangerously low due to extensive pervasive dehydration, and there was also no evidence that she had had anything to eat in at least the last three to four days previous due to her not needing to eliminate."

Clayton's jaw almost dropped; It hadn't occurred to him once to wonder why, during their day hiding under the fallen tree waiting out the hurricane, she had never had to wake up to go outside to relieve herself. In fact, he hadn't even thought about it. Christ, what kind of leader had he been that he hadn't even noticed? He remembered Allie telling him that it wasn't his fault, Cam hadn't told him, but Jesus, at that time she hadn't been capable of saying or doing anything and he was supposed to watch over the soldiers he was responsible for, whether here or in training. "The insufficient amount of water in her body led to her blood thickening and slowing down, with a resulting drop in blood pressure. General Abernathy said that she spent a good portion of their day and a half waiting out the storm sleeping; I believe she may actually have been slipping in and out of a light coma from shock, the uncontrolled hemorrhaging, and her generally deteriorating physical condition."

Clayton gritted his teeth; he hadn't been made aware of any of this, and he was going to have a little talk with his medics when this was all over. Mainframe and Dial Tone, sitting in the panel chairs, were pale, and even Judge Daniels looked faintly uncomfortable.

"Based on your evaluation of her physical condition, would your opinion be that there was clear evidence of direct neglect and deliberate negligence?" By taking this out of the clinical realm, Shana was going to give him a chance to express what he really felt about what had happened, as a doctor and as an Army officer.

"Yes." Ed was visibly gathering himself. "The internal damage was done some days previous to when I examined her; in fact, pretty much all of her injuries, with the exception of her pre-existing scarring and resulting complication, were inflicted in the last four days. Some of it, like cuts, scrapes and bruises would have been negligible; those are inevitable in an outdoor camping/survival situation.

"However, certain things are not as negligible. The first and most egregious evidence of Broadview's negligence was at the start of Phase I of the RTL. Upon intake, Colonel Broadview took Corporal Arlington into an interrogation room alone. According to Walker's testimony, Broadview told him when he was first asked to take part in this conspiracy that Corporal Arlington had had a CPTSD flashback while being photographed nude as part of the medical intake procedure. At this point Colonel Broadview should have called a halt to the training exercise, made her comfortable, and immediately notified Camp Mackall's Chief Medical officer and the base commander.

"My guess, although I have not been able to confirm this since Corporal Arlington is unwilling to divulge the details of what happened in that interrogation room when she was alone with Colonel Broadview, is that he physically tried to 'snap her out of it' by utilizing the abdominal slap, to a point where anyone could consider it excessive, in direct violation of her medical records which state that the burn scarring was extensive across her torso and care should be taken with impacts to that area of her body so that the remaining vessels that supply blood to her internal organs would not be damaged. This warning is clearly marked in both her personnel record and her medical file, so in my opinion there is no way he could have missed seeing it.

"The slaps ruptured the fragile blood vessels in her lower abdomen and she began to bleed. The physical pain shocked her out of her flashback, and at that point she would have experienced severe pain and, as she was bleeding into her lower abdominal cavity, there would have been evidence of blood on her legs. According to the testimony provided by Camp Mackall's CMO, who came into the room at that moment, Broadview had a hose aimed at the Corporal, who was standing in a corner dripping wet and crying. He asked Colonel Broadview if Corporal Arlington was all right, was given an affirmative answer, and Colonel Broadview then took her immediately outside to PT on the outdoor obstacle course.

"The next instance I can point to as an example of negligence is Colonel Broadview's decision to PT her on a day in which the temperature reached one hundred seven degrees. First you need to remember that she was already in pain and bleeding internally, hemorrhaging. Colonel Broadview PTd her in the heat, forcing her to run the Nasty Nick at least three times, according to the testimony of Sergeant Masters of the 82nd. She was given neither food, water, or rest between rounds of the course, and since it was made muddy to make navigating it harder, the portions of her skin that had sweat glands and produced skin moisture were soon caked with mud and dirt, and not being given a chance to wash it off or clean it off led to the mud caking on the parts of her body that could shed excess heat. The heat built up and by the time she was returned to the POW pens, she was unresponsive due to rapidly-progressing hyperthermia. If it hadn't been for General Abernathy's quick thinking, instant realization of the problem, and if Corporal Tibbs of the 82nd had not been quick in returning with a hose and immediately began to spray her down, she may only have had a few more minutes at most before brain damage occurred, and in another quarter of an hour she would have been dead."

Clayton barely saw the shocked looks on the faces of the Joes on the findings panel; his brain had stumbled over that revelation and skidded to a stop. He hadn't known she'd come that close to dying. Yes, he really had to have a talk with his medical officer about not having been told all of this before he heard it here.

"The last example of negligence would have been the hurricane itself. As soon as it was established that the storm was going to make landfall in North Carolina and that the size of the storm meant it would have significant impact on Camp Mackall the training should have been suspended or moved indoors. That it didn't shows lack of concern for all the trainees, not just Corporal Arlington although her conviction that Colonel Broadview was going to leave her alone in the pens for the duration of the storm is worrisome. At this point she'd been internally hemorrhaging for four days, she was likely experiencing intense pain and cramping, fever, and nausea, and the lack of food, water and sleep didn't help; all the witness testimonies say that she at this point was firmly convinced she would be left outside alone while everyone else was brought inside, and at this point in the training, while I wonder when something was said to her that gave her that impression, I also wonder whether she would indeed have been left outside. Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett, while she was preparing to prefer these charges for court martial spoke with Colonel Broadview and he admitted under questioning that he would not have have left her out there alone long, just long enough to make a point. By this I deduce that he may actually have left her outside; I don't know for how long but if his current pattern of negligence and cruelty were an indicator of future behavior, Corporal Arlington may well have been in much worse shape, possibly comatose, by the time the RTL ended."

Shana nodded. "No further questions."

Lieutenant Mitchell rose from his seat. "Dr. Steen, according to the charges on the charge sheet my client is being charged with cruelty and maltreatment. However, the text of the statute says that imposition of duties, even if those duties are exacting and arduous, do not constitute cruelty, and since this happened in the commission of carrying out a duty, my client should not be charged."

"I read the statute. While I agree that SERE training is a duty, it should not have been nearly as arduous as it was and due consideration should have been given to her prior medical condition as clearly indicated in her personnel and medical files."

"Due consideration should also be given to the fact that my client's commanding officer made it a habit of not acquainting his subordinate personnel with the files of incoming trainees so as not to unfairly bias said subordinate personnel against said trainees. General Abernathy's testimony said that my client was not even aware of Corporal Arlington's gender until Corporal Walker requested to be assigned to another team. Based on that not being given access to those personnel files, my client can hardly be charged when it was his commanding officer Colonel Hilton's negligence that initiated my client's ignorance." He didn't give Lifeline a chance to refute that.

"The next charge on the sheet is maiming. Now, it is my understanding that in order for maiming to occur the victim must have suffered an injury that was inflicted deliberately and with intent to injure, and such injury must have resulted in serious diminishment of physical vigor."

"I would say that striking her in the lower abdominal area hard enough and enough times to cause internal hemorrhaging definitely resulted in a diminishment of her physical vigor. All the witness testimony indicates a distinct pattern of deteriorating physical condition from that moment on."

"My problem, Dr. Steen, is with the intent to injure. The abdominal slap is used regularly on all SERE trainees, as attested to by the witness testimony of the gentlemen of Company A. It is an approved technique for use on SERE trainees, therefore, as my client had no prior knowledge of Corporal Arlington's existing medical condition, there could have been no deliberate intent to injure as the same technique was used on the other members of the team to which she was assigned; General Abernathy, Corporal Ryder and Specialist Miller."

"But he was aware by this time of her CPTSD. She was having a flashback in front of him, which I assume was why he used the abdominal slap on her to excess, his attempt to 'snap her out of it' instead of calling an immediate halt to the exercise and informing the camp's CMO—"

"But that only goes back to the negligence, which we have already explained with the fact that Colonel Broadview's superior did not provide access to trainee files before commencement of the training. With the facts in evidence you cannot prove deliberate intent to injure." Ed was silent; he couldn't argue with that, and Clayton saw the frustration on his face as well as Alex and Shana's. _He's gonna skate on that charge_, Clayton thought grimly. "I also move to dismiss the charge of assault with intent to injure; the charging document says my client did assault Corporal Arlington with intent to inflict grievous bodily hard due to excessive use of the abdominal slap, which use was clearly contraindicated by Corporal Arlington's prior medical condition. Not having knowledge of that medical condition removes intent from the charge and thereby nullifies the spirit of the statute."

Judge Daniels tapped his gavel. "Motion is approved; however dispensation will be given to prosecution to have said charge reinstated should evidence turn up during the course of this court martial that shows Colonel Broadview did have knowledge of the Corporal's medical condition prior to these events happening."

"I will also ask the court to dismiss the charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman; as my client had no knowledge of the trainee's current medical condition—"

"You are reaching, Lieutenant Mitchell," Judge Daniels warned. "While I will grant that not being given access to the trainee's medical and personnel file contributed to your client's ignorance of Corporal Arlington's medical state, you cannot convince me, or the court, to believe that upon seeing Corporal Arlington's flashback your client could not figure out for himself that something was wrong with the trainee. That he then continued with the training exercise afterwards indicates callous disregard for her health and well-being and thereby clearly shows unbecoming conduct. That motion is denied."

"Your honor, I must protest that ruling. This training was not necessary for Corporal Arlington's training record; her participation in SERE-C was purely voluntary. Her commanding officer may have recommended the training to her, it is true, but she was informed at the commencement of the exercise that as she would not be forward of the front line of troops completion of SERE-C was not necessary to achieve her career goals. Therefore if she felt at any point that her life and health were in danger she would simply have had to call a halt to the exercise, to drop out." Clayton's heart sank. They were going to make it her fault now. Of course.

"Objection." Alex shot to her feet before Shana could say anything. "Colonel Broadview made it clear to her at the commencement of the training exercise that contrary to the usual rules of SERE training, if she should drop out of the exercise she would not only fail but the rest of her training team would fail with her. And as the leader of her training team was a decorated Army General with a long and distinguished career, she could well have believed that her failure would have caused his downfall. Not to mention which," she raised her voice over Mitchell's half-voiced protests, "She was suffering from fever, intense pain, possible nausea, dehydration, shock from the internal hemorrhaging, blood loss, and general weakness and dizziness, all of which contributed to her inability to make rational, logical decisions about whether to continue her training or not. If she had been thinking rationally, when she awoke from her bout with hyperthermia she should have immediately requested a medical discharge. That she didn't clearly indicates her lack of rational thought processes."

"Objection sustained." Daniels tapped his gavel. "Do you have any other questions on cross examinations for this witness, Lieutenant Mitchell?"

"No, your honor, I'm done." Mitchell sat abruptly.

"Lieutenant Preston?"

"No questions at this time, Your Honor."

Shana stood. "Prosecution calls as its next witness Detective Olivia Benson of the New York Police Department."

Liv rose from her seat and took the seat Clayton had just vacated, stopping long enough to take the oath that Shana administered, and commenced to give her account of what had happened that evening in the women's studio. Preston didn't have any questions for her, and neither did he have any questions for Alex, who came next.

Judge Daniels called a halt after Alex's testimony. "Court will recess until tomorrow morning, at which time the statements of the 82nd will be read. Any questions the panel may have will then be written and the person to whom the questioned testimony will be contacted to provide remote testimony. Court is now in recess."


	6. Chapter 65: The 82nd

**Chapter 65: The 82nd**

"Good thinking," Clayton heard Shana say to Alex as the prosecution team gathered in the hallway outside the temporary courtroom. "That conditional fail didn't even cross my mind."

"Technically, if there was a statute for it, it should have been coercion," Alex said grimly, her blue eyes snapping, then softened as Cam and Charlie joined them in the hallway. "How are you doing, Cam?"

"Okay," Cam said quietly. "Some of it was…a little difficult…but you guys have been really great about all of it."

"The hardest part is still coming," Alex said quietly. "After reading selected testimony from members of the 82nd tomorrow, we'll be putting you up there and you'll have to testify."

"I know." Cam nodded.

"Cam…I asked before but you didn't want to tell me…what did happen inside the intake room between you and Colonel Broadview right after we got there?" Clayton asked her.

"Uh-uh." Shana shook her head before Cam could say anything. "Clayton, you can't ask her about her testimony. Not only court-martial rules, but mine as well. I was keeping an eye on you in the courtroom, and some of what was said came as a shock to you—you hadn't realized her medical condition was that serious, I guess, no one told you, and I'll bet you skimmed the medical report instead of reading the whole thing."

"Don't get upset, that worked in our favor." Alex spoke quickly. "The panel saw your surprise and it made an even deeper impression on them than it would have otherwise. I want to keep on reinforcing that surprise and shock and outrage. Don't be afraid to let your feelings show, because those help too. Even the judge looked a little disgusted at one point. So no, don't discuss it, let it be a surprise tomorrow. Now come on, we all need sleep and Shana and I have to prepare for tomorrow. Clayton, since Cam and Charlie are still technically on leave, are you going to get mad if they bunk together?"

"I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that." Clayton covered his ears melodramatically and walked away, smiling inwardly at the explosion of Cam's laughter behind him.

Court reconvened at oh-nine-hundred the next morning, same players, same places. Charlie was a silent shadow behind Cam's elbow, a solid, comforting bulk, and she seemed to draw strength from his presence.

Alex read Masters' testimony, and mindful of what both women had said to him the night before about his reactions having an impact on the panel, he tried not to hide his reactions as much, tried to look shocked at all the right places without making it look like he was putting in an effort to make it seem that way.

Not that it was all that hard; he hadn't been allowed to read the testimonies of the three members of the 82nd who had chosen to give Allie the full, uncensored versions of their training reports. He remembered they had told Allie that Hilton and Broadview had insisted that they keep their reports brief, and that those reports would be checked for 'factuality and relevance', but he didn't suspect how detailed those reports had been until Alex started reading them aloud.

And these too were eye-openers. Broadview's orders from the moment that the 82nd had been assigned to 'hunt' down the trainees had been to find Team B. According to Masters', Tibbs' and Carter's testimonies, his focus had been on her, and by extension, her team, almost to the exclusion of everyone else. Hawk had to grit his teeth as Masters detailed how Broadview had repeatedly called him the 'old man' before all the soldiers; had repeatedly shown disdain and contempt for both Cam and Hawk, displayed by his continual use of racially-based, derogatory terms; chink, dumb bitch, cunt, squaw…those were only a few of the names he'd called Cam, according to Masters' testimony.

According to the rules of SERE training and what they'd been told, Company A had been promised a day of R&R off-base for each team they'd caught. According to all three testimonies, they'd been promised a three-day pass if they found Clayton's team before the last rendezvous before the RTL portion—a pass which they hadn't gotten due to Team B's ingenuity and ability to evade capture. Broadview had even deliberately tried to make it easier by taking points away for a hidesite not built close to a rendezvous point, and taking seventy-five points from Cam had indicated he knew full well she was the main reason they'd avoided capture. And with all this evidence in front of him of her abilities, skills and character, he'd still persisted in hating her; Clayton couldn't understand why and hoped that either Shana or Alex would ask that question when it was their turn to cross-examine Colonel Broadview on the witness stand.

Masters himself was a detailed writer, and Alex was a skilled reader; she changed her own voice and tone according to what she could feel the writer intended. Her voice adequately conveyed Masters' shock when Broadview told her to strip out of her fatigues and put on the scrubs that served as RTL POW uniforms; he hadn't known about the physical scarring beforehand, but his testimony noted the ramifications immediately. "With that much scarring, she's not going to be able to thermoregulate, so we're going to have to find another way to tire her out other than PT," and then went on to describe his absolute shock that Broadview wasn't going to treat her any differently from any of the other trainees. "I tried to explain to him, in case he didn't understand. Sweat glands don't grow back in scar tissue, especially as much as she had, so she wasn't going to be able to get rid of excess heat."

He'd been shocked that Cam hadn't been provided with shoes. "I went to Colonel Halloran's office later and looked up her personnel file. She wears a little child's size three, for pity's sake, kids shoes are cheaper than adults, and he could have gotten a basic pair of canvas shoes from any cheap general store for the price of a hamburger!" Alex's voice rose on the end of the sentence to reflect Masters' incredulity. And then while Cam was in intake, Masters had been outside supervising PT for Warren when they'd both heard Cam cry out, "Don't! Please, stop!" before it was instantly muffled.

Hawk watched Daniels' eyes flick sideways to Broadview, sitting at the defense table looking calm and unruffled, then glance at Cam and then back at Broadview, and he could read on the man's face the question, what did you do to her? But Alex was going on with testimony and that was a question that would have to wait for later.

Masters, Tibbs' and Carter's testimonies all expressed shock over the hyperthermia incident, but Hawk didn't hear outrage until Masters described coming out of the mess hall and seeing Cam crawling nude through the mud in full shackles with a dog leash snapped around her neck. "We all just stared in shock, some of us because we hadn't known her body was that badly scarred. I was outraged, and so were a lot of my buddies, because he hadn't given her clothes, not even her underclothes and come on, when a woman is on her hands and knees some parts of her body are more exposed than others, and in my opinion Broadview did that deliberately—there was blood on her legs and I think she had her period at the time and the whole thing was completely unnecessary. He'd dragged another of the SERE trainees out on a dog leash, it's a common tactic, but that was another member of one of the other teams, Lewis, I think the name was, and that soldier had been allowed to keep his underclothes on. Corporal Arlington had been issued a set of scrubs at the start of the RTL, but after the intake I never saw them on her again; she pretty much spent the entire RTL nude and I think it was because he was trying to break her emotionally by displaying her physical deficiencies every chance he got."

Alex continued to read. "He paraded her through the camp like this three times, three laps. I followed him the last time as he took her back, and I saw him grab her hair and yank her head up and taunt her team with her physical condition, telling the other members of her team that she would never last in a POW situation. I saw them, all of them, start getting mad at him because of what he was doing to her, and then I saw him take out a knife and he started to scalp her. He grabbed handfuls of her hair and hacked at it with a knife."

Corporal Tibbs testimony reflected the same outrage. "I told him to stop, he'd made his point. Fine, she wouldn't last forward of the front lines, she knew that, we knew that, I just wanted him to stop. She was clearly in pain and trying to get away but he kept yanking at the leash around her neck, almost strangling her, and he kept hacking until all of her hair was gone. And she had really long hair, I remember when I saw it hanging down and loose I thought she must look like those portraits of Indian girls, with feathers and long blowing hair and it must have taken her a long time to grow it out like that and then Colonel Broadview just cut it all off. It's not the first time we've seen instructors cut SERE trainees' hair off; I remember Colonel Halloran doing that to a male trainee about two classes ago, the guy had dreads and Colonel Halloran had him kneel in the center of camp and took an electric shaver to his head until it was all gone and he had a buzz cut. But what Colonel Broadview did to Corporal Arlington was just…wrong on a lot of levels."

The gist of the remaining testimonies was general shock and disgust; Masters had been appalled when Broadview kicked her when she didn't move fast enough. That was why he'd stopped and taken of her shackles, had eased her into her en instead of shoving her in. As he was the ranking member of Company A he'd given orders to his people to ignore the 'prisoners' talking; no one had complained.

They'd known about the incipient hurricane a couple of days before it had actually hit, but they hadn't been aware of just how far inland it would reach until the night Broadview had cut her hair; when they'd all gotten back to the barracks the weather report had showed them the size and intensity of the storm and Hilton, Halloran and Broadview had started making plans, according to Masters. "They told us not to open the usual escape routes, that they would bring the SERE trainees into the solitary confinement cells and go through an extra round of interrogation in lieu of the usual escape and airlift exercise. Then Broadview told us to start bringing the trainees inside the barracks in the morning one by one, but he told us to leave Corporal Arlington alone, he'd deal with her himself.

"I didn't like the way that sounded and Hilton apparently didn't either because he told Broadview he couldn't leave her out in the pens during a hurricane, and Broadview told him he knew. He said he wanted to see whether the storm would downgrade in intensity before he decided what to do. I, and a handful of others, interpreted that to mean that if it dropped to a tropical storm, he would leave her out there; if it stayed a hurricane he would bring her in. We agreed that we didn't like that and so when the trainees started talking later about escape I decided not to interfere. Her team had so far proved superlative at successful survival and evasion, and it was rather universally thought by all of us that she would be vastly more comfortable out in the forest with her team than she would have trapped in these pens with Broadview. I've seen him engage in some questionable behavior with some of the other female trainees in the past but this time he was so far over the line that none of us could tell what he would do next, and at this point she looked terrible and I knew her team leader was worried about her health and safety and I was too."

After Alex finished reading the testimony Mitchell stood up. "Permission to have Sergeant Masters join us via video conferencing for cross-examination," he asked Daniels.

Daniels nodded to Shana. "Court will recess until this afternoon. Please contact Fort Bragg and request that Sergeant Masters join us for the afternoon session via video conferencing."

When court reconvened that afternoon Sergeant Masters joined them. Shana swore him in as a prosecution witness, then thanked him for making himself available for the court martial.

"You're welcome. I was kind of expecting this a lot sooner, like maybe a month ago, though?" he raised his voice at the end of the sentence in a question.

"There were some…unavoidable delays," Shana smiled crookedly at him. "It's a long story."

"I'll look forward to hearing it at some point," Masters said, then looked past her, saluted Clayton. "Good afternoon, Sir. And good afternoon, Corporal Arlington. You're looking a lot better now than you did the last time I saw you."

"Thank you, Sergeant Masters Sir," Cam spoke, and then Lieutenant Mitchell stood up and stepped forward.

"Sergeant Masters. I'm Lieutenant Mitchell of the US Army JAG corps, defense counsel for Colonel Thomas Broadview."

"Lieutenant Preston, US JAG corps, defense counsel for Corporal Anthony Walker."

"Good afternoon, sirs." Masters' salute was stiff but polite.

Mitchell got right to the point. "My client, Colonel Thomas Broadview, is currently being charged with cruelty and maltreatment, and conduct unbecoming an officer."

"That's it? When Trial Counsel contacted me and informed me I might have to make myself available for cross-examination, she told me the charges were cruelty and maltreatment, maiming, assault with intent to injure, and conduct unbecoming—"

"Two of those charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, Sergeant Masters. Now about the matters at hand."

A muscle bunched in Masters jaw as he bit down on the rest of what he was about to say, and instead he came up with a curt, "Yes sir."

"The statute for Article 93, the cruelty charge, states that the nature of the act must be measured by an objective standard. It also states that imposition of necessary or proper duties and the exaction of their performance does not constitute this offense even though the duties are arduous or hazardous or both. Now, the SERE-C courses are supposed to be arduous. And it can be hazardous. Do you agree, Sergeant?"

"They aren't supposed to be that hazardous to the extent that they were!"

Judge Daniels tapped his gavel. "Answer the question, Sergeant Masters."

Masters' jaw muscle bunched again. "Yes, I agree."

"And it is the responsibility of the trainee to complete the course, however arduous and hazardous, correct?"

"Yes. Sir."

"Therefore my client did nothing wrong during supervision of Corporal Arlington's training. Moving on," he continued quickly when Masters opened his mouth to protest. "To the charge of conduct unbecoming an officer. Sergeant Masters, you specified in your testimony that you were surprised when Colonel Broadview announced his intention to treat her no differently than any other trainee, correct?"

"Yes, Sir."

"However, in making this affirmation he was complying with what the trainee herself wanted, not to be treated any differently."

"But she was treated differently. Not given shoes. PT'd on a day when the outdoor temperature reached 107. She wasn't given food when the other trainees were, she wasn't allowed to rest when the other trainees were, and the incident with the dog leash and cutting her hair was…indefensible."

"Let's go over those one at a time. The shoes issue—Were you aware that Corporal Arlington wasn't added to the roster of trainees attending this SERE-C course until the week before it was about to start? Colonel Hilton didn't receive her personnel file until three days before it was due to start, an oversight on the part of her commanding officer. As the officer in charge of the RTL, my client was not given her measurements in time to procure a pair of SERE-approved shoes in her size because her feet were so small. Therefore, the issue with shoes could not be my client's fault." Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he hurried on."You said she was PT'd on a day when the outdoor temperature was 107. Were other soldiers not out on the obstacle course with her, supervising her PT? And said soldiers were fully clothed and suffering from the heat, where Corporal Arlington was unclothed and therefore suffered less. The obstacle course field was also muddy and had been made that way deliberately so that the water on the ground would mitigate some of the heat in the air, correct? So adequate care was taken to ensure her health and safety. Deprivation of food—the SERE course is supposed to test the trainees in that manner, so nothing different was done there either. And in your testimony you yourself said that force-marching a soldier around the stockade on the end of a dog leash has been done before, and you testify that another Colonel there also cut the hair of another trainee. So nothing different was done to Corporal Arlington that hasn't been done already to other SERE trainees, and because of his ignorance of her prior medical condition and the warning notes placed in her file, he didn't know some of these treatments were contraindicated." Mitchell raised a hand. "No further questions."

"Thank you for your time, Sergeant Masters." Shana said simply before the connection was severed.


	7. Chapter 66: Cam's Testimony

**Chapter 66: Cam's Testimony**

"Based on this testimony provided, I hereby move for a dismissal of the charge of cruelty and maltreatment; Trial Counsel has stated that 'he PT'd her to excess while ignoring prior medical reports' as my client did not know about those prior medical reports, he cannot be held responsible. Similarly, the example of removing the corporal's hair can also be dismissed because it was done to another trainee so it cannot be considered to be unduly 'cruel'."

"As reprehensible as I find the Colonel's entire course of behavior to be, unfortunately I must concur with the defense in this matter. Colonel Broadview did nothing different to Corporal Arlington that he hasn't done to other trainees, either in this class or to previous classes before, so I am hereby dismissing the charge of cruelty and maltreatment. The findings panel will disregard the charges against the accused in the matter of Articles 93, 124, 128, and the panel will therefore only consider the offenses concerning article 133, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and article 134, clause 1, which is defined as prejudice to the good order and discipline of the armed forces of the United States.

"Court will adjourn for the afternoon to give the findings panel time to revise their assessment of the court-martial to reflect the dismissed charges. Court will resume at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. Dismissed."

Shana blew out her breath in the hall; Clayton had never seen her look so dejected before. "I'm sorry, Cam," she said as Cam and Charlie joined them out in the hallway.

"Don't be. You tried. And it was a long shot anyway." Cam smiled at Shana.

"It's not over yet," Alex said with some asperity; she was walking slowly a couple steps behind them, looking over her notes. "Shana, can we speak to Sergeant Masters again? And do you have Colonel Hilton's testimony from when he pled guilty right after the Walker affair?"

"Why? Do you see something I don't?" Shana dropped back to walk next to Alex, looking over her shoulder. Clayton stopped too.

"Uh-uh. Not you. If this doesn't pan out everyone's going to be disappointed. I'd rather work on this with Shana alone until I know for sure it's going to work." Alex closed her notebook. "Come on, Shana. I want to catch Sergeant Masters before he goes too far."

Court reconvened at oh-nine-hundred the next morning; the usual faces in the usual places except one. Clayton leaned forward and whispered to Shana, "Where's Alex?"

Was that a slightly smug grin on Shana's face? "Working on that hunch she had. My job for today is to stall, let this drag out as long as possible; Alex said she should have an answer back by the end of day today and we'll wrap this court martial up tomorrow after Mitchell calls Broadview himself to testify."

Stall? What was Alex doing? Clayton was dying of curiosity, even more when he saw Shana lean over and whisper to Cam, "I'm going to call you up on the witness stand. Take as long as you like up there. Get emotional. The more emotional the better, and if you can somehow get the judge convinced you're too worked up to continue maybe we can get a recess after you're done and I won't have to try and stall till tomorrow." Cam nodded and sat down quietly.

"The court martial will now come to order." Judge Daniels got everyone's attention. "Trial Counsel, I see someone missing at your table."

"Co-Trial Counsel anticipated having some questions for one of the persons whose name came up during the course of both General Abernathy's testimony and Sergeant Masters'. Colonel Hilton is currently serving a six month sentence in Leavenworth after pleading guilty to misprision and obstruction and as a result is difficult to get hold of; co-Trial Council Cabot is trying to obtain clarification on his testimony. In the meantime I am perfectly able to call the next prosecution witness."

Judge Daniels frowned, his forehead wrinkling. "I will allow it," he said finally. "Do you anticipate needing to call Colonel Hilton to provide testimony in these matters?"

"We do not, no," Shana clarified. "Colonel Hilton provided us with written testimony that can be read for the purposes of this trial; Private Cabot simply needed to ascertain some details."

"Go ahead and call your next witness then."

Shana took a breath."Prosecution calls as its next witness Corporal Cameron Arlington."

Clayton watched as Cam rose from her chair and took the witness stand, was duly sworn in, and sat. "I have to admit, I was initially looking forward to the SERE-C course," Cam said now, clasping her hands in her lap and sitting quietly. "I attended SERE-A the year before with the rest of the Ranger battalions, and I actually found the Survival and evasion course fun. When my father and I lived at Osan he would take me backpacking in the woods on his days off, and we would have to survive on whatever we found, and although everyone thought it was harsh, I enjoyed it."

_Yeah, I bet you would have. You enjoyed SERE-C S&E too; would have enjoyed it more if you hadn't been so worried about being perfect because our careers rested on your completion._ Clayton didn't voice what he was thinking, however.

"I was somewhat disappointed when I got there and there were no other women; I remembered when I was there the year before, there were two other women in SERE-A and although Colonel Broadview showed a definite dislike of women and would cuss us out as often as he could, he didn't do anything overtly hostile or against the rules and I figured this time would be the same. It wasn't until they split us up into teams and Corporal Walker refused to be part of mine and asked for reassignment that I realized this course was going to be harder than I thought.

"Colonel Hilton started talking about sending me back, and I tried to protest; I needed SERE-C certification to achieve Ranger qualification. Yes, I knew women weren't allowed in the Rangers—yet—but I hoped someday they would relax that rule and I intended to be the first one qualified to step in." Cam's eyes flicked to Clayton's. "And then General Abernathy told them that while my gender could be a possible liability in the field, any abilities I might have could be an asset and balance the vulnerability and he told them if I wanted to take the course I should be allowed to. And then when the instructors said if no one wanted to work with me they would send me back, he volunteered. And so did Demo and Ryder." He voice softened. "I was…intensely grateful. And when Colonel Broadview told all of my team that if I failed the course they would all fail too, I made promise to myself that I would see this thing through no matter how hard it got and no matter what happened. If they were going to stick their necks out for me I was going to make sure I repaid their faith by not quitting."

A deep breath. "As soon as General Abernathy came over—I didn't know he was a general at that point, he'd been very careful not to let us know what rank he was—"

Shana interrupted. "At this point in the training, what did you call your team leader?"

"He introduced himself as Clayton Abernathy, Hawk."

"Forget rank then, Corporal. I want you to refer to him with the same terms you used at the time."

"Yes, Ma'am." Cam nodded then went on with her story. "I asked Hawk why he'd stood up for me, stuck up for me, and he said he worked with women who have never been liabilities and he knew my commanding officer, Base Commander Shelton Dixon, and that if Dixon thought I was good enough for this he was willing to give me the benefit of doubt. I promised him at that point that I would not disappoint him."

She went on to tell them about the encounter in the meadow, how her respect for Clayton grew when he accepted her without reservations, was interested in her life and upbringing as an Iroquois, had stood up for her during the debacle with her flute, had accepted punishment in the mess hall the next evening even though none of it was his fault and she herself hadn't thought it was fair.

Then her voice went as flat and emotionless as her face as she stared at the tabletop, unable to look up, as she described the ambush in the barracks. "I knew that Walker was in the barracks; when I stepped in I smelled the cologne he likes. I tried to reach for the light switch but someone grabbed me in a bear hug and another person popped a heavy bag over my head and I felt the strings tighten around my throat. I tried to get free, get some air, to scream, to ask them to stop, whatever, but I couldn't even get enough air to breathe and that pressure around my neck was the last thing I felt before I lost consciousness. And when I woke up I was tied in a very small, cramped area. I couldn't scream; there was a huge knot of rope between my teeth and the rope still tied around my neck was too tight for me to get a really deep breath of air in. When I tried moving, experimentally, the rope tightened around my neck and I stopped quickly; I didn't want to strangle.

"There wasn't much I could do at that point but wait. I didn't know how long I'd been unconscious, but I did know that if I started struggling now when there was no one to hear me, I would probably die, so I just lay there and waited. I did manage to sleep for a little while I think but when I woke up I could feel the pain in my hands and feet and body."

"Did you ever think, at any point, that you might not be found? That maybe you'd run out of air or die of asphyxiation before someone found you?" Shana asked quietly.

"There were cracks in the wood of the footlocker , so air wasn't an issue. And…I know it seems odd, but the entire time I was in there, I didn't panic, there was no point at which I even thought I might not be found. I knew that Clayton would find me eventually; I just needed to make sure I was in good enough shape to let him know how to get me out when he did find me. And then I heard his voice, and he was asking me for the combination, and I started hitting the inside of the footlocker to give him the numbers." A break in her voice. "I could feel the rope tightening with every movement, could see my vision start to gray out from lack of oxygen, and I was terrified I'd pass out before I got him the combination, but I kept trying, and then the lid came off and I saw him, and he looked so shocked and so relieved…I don't really remember a lot else after that as circulation started to return and it hurt. I think he picked me up and carried me to the infirmary, but I don't remember much else."

"Please go on." Shana's voice was soft. The courtroom was silent, but the findings panel's faces showed empathy for her. A good thing.

She described the rest of the S&E week as 'easy' and 'fun'; Clayton seriously wondered if the rest of his team would have described it as such. He wouldn't have found it easy or fun if it hadn't been for her, her constant encouragement, finding things along the way to eat, landmarks, and especially the little ambushes they'd come up with whenever they met Broadview at yet another checkpoint. And it surprised him when she told Shana she'd been upset at Broadview taking points from her team, but not upset about him taking points from her; at that point she'd accepted that he didn't like her, for whatever reason, and was going to take every opportunity to subtract as many points from her as he could. "Did I think it was fair? No," she said frankly. "But then, life for me has never been fair, and I don't expect it to be. I learned early on that there is a different set of rules for my life than there seems to be for everyone else, and complaining doesn't help. All I was concerned about at that point was making sure my team made it."

She'd accepted Broadview shoving her around all over the trail on their way back to Camp Mackall; she'd accepted that they didn't give her shoes ("I do have small feet,") but struggled to keep her temper as Broadview shouted obscenities at her. She'd managed to keep it together until the moment she walked into the intake rooms and Broadview had started on her.

Clayton struggled to keep his own temper as Cam related, in a flat, toneless voice, what had actually happened in the intake room between herself and Broadview. He'd been right when he'd chalked up her earlier unwillingness to talk down to the fact that she'd known something had been done in Intake that was against the rules of the training. Broadview _had_ used only the approved techniques; attention holds, walling, name-calling and abusive language, the abdominal slap—but what violated the spirit of the training was the amount of force used and for how long it went. "He wasn't pulling his slaps and shoving around; he was using all of his strength on me. I saw stars a couple of times when he pushed me into the wall, even with the walling collar on." Shana scribbled something down quickly.

"It did get to the point where it was a bit much for me; I did ask him to stop for a moment, my head hurt and my stomach was cramping viciously from the abdominal slaps, and I remember begging him to stop for just a moment. He shoved me up against the wall, took the walling collar off and grabbed the camera to take the intake photos—he said that since my skin didn't show bruises there was little point to taking the photos but they were required for the training and he started taking pictures. And that was when I lost it. That first flash…I was back in my Aunt and Uncle's basement, bruised and hurting from whatever they'd just done to me and they were taking pictures for their pedophile friends…the next thing I remember is high-pressure cold water hitting me, in the lower belly, and the agony was so sharp..I was crying, and then I saw Colonel Halloran come in and stop Colonel Broadview, and Broadview turned off the high-pressure hose he'd been spraying me down with and grabbed my arm and marched me outside to PT."

Clayton sneaked a look to his right; Charlie was sitting off to his right and in the row behind him, but his face was stony and the cold glare he directed at Colonel Broadview, sitting calmly and quietly behind the defense table, was full of anger. Clayton remembered what Dash had said when Cam and Charlie came to base for the court martial; _if something happens to Cam I don't know how to predict what Charlie's going to do. _Clayton thought quietly that if Charlie knew how to 'curse' Colonel Broadview using his skills as a Navajo medicine man, he'd probably be doing it after this was over.

Not that Clayton could blame him. If he'd had any idea that this was what happened in that intake room he would have called a halt to the whole training right there; he was going to ask Doc about Cam's stating that she'd 'seen stars' when he'd walled her. That could be a sign of a possible concussion, and if it had been obvious, then negligence could be proved by his not attending to that as soon as it happened.

Cam's voice stayed flat and emotionless as she described being forcibly PT'd on the Nasty Nick, the obstacle course at Camp Mackall. The course had been made muddy deliberately so it would be hard to get through, and in the 107 degree heat, exhausted from(at that point) almost eighteen hours of continuous movement, with no water and no rest, after the CPTSD flashback she'd experienced in intake, she'd quickly gone numb. Masters had described seeing her at a few points in the course as 'almost zombie-like' and Clayton knew now that it had been the beginning stages of heatstroke, which ether Broadview had not recognized or had ignored; and then the inattention to the heatstroke worsened to hyperthermia, and it had taken Clayton's quick recognition and Corporal Tibbs' quick acting that had been the only thing that saved her from permanent brain damage and possible death.

She went on to describe the day she'd spent under medical supervision. Broadview had subjected her to extremes of heat and cold, though not for prolonged periods that would send her either hyperthermic or hypothermic. Colonel Potter had supervised the whole day, and it had only been when the rains started that he'd withdrew and left her with Colonel Broadview. According to Potter's testimony, he'd been a little concerned that she hadn't been allowed to eat or sleep, but since she didn't complain he'd left her alone. It was only now as Cam described what she'd gone through that Clayton was gradually understanding that by this point in the RTL, Cam wasn't able to think clearly at all.

"I look at it now and I wonder what I was thinking," she said, staring down at the tabletop and speaking quietly. Her soft voice in the room was the only sound; the room was absolutely silent. "If I'd been thinking clearly I would have ended it and I would have asked for a medical discharge; but at the time, for some reason I had sort of a tunnel-vision, the only thing I could think of was that I had to complete the course, I had to get all the way through it. Knowing that Clayton, Shawn, and Kenny would have failed too if I failed was a large part of it too, but even though they had said that my health mattered more to them than whether they passed the course or not, I couldn't see it."


	8. Chapter 67: Cam's Testimony Part 2

**Chapter 67: Cam's Testimony Part 2**

Broadview had sent her out to PT with Sergeant Masters as soon as the rain started, then when Masters brought her in after an hour, stumbling and exhausted, Broadview had finished with Clayton in interrogation quickly and taken Cam back out, put her in full body shackles and ran her over the obstacle course one more time before parading her around the stockade. When he'd finished the third lap he'd brought her back to the pens and proceeded to cut her hair, and for the first time there was a tremor in Cam's voice as she described how that had felt.

"It hurt," she whispered now, her eyes filling with tears. "It hurt, and it wasn't just physical. He'd figured out what my weakness was, and it was, of all things, my hair. I've been repeatedly told all my life that I'm not particularly pretty, that I'm plain and homely but the one thing I've always liked most about myself was my hair. And Colonel Broadview cut it all off, he grabbed handfuls and cut it all off with a dull knife, and it hurt so much…when he was done I just collapsed, he broke me, and he knew it and I knew it and everyone else knew it too. "

She scrubbed at the tears on her cheeks angrily. "I heard him tell Masters to put me in the pens, and I tried to move quickly but I just couldn't, and then he kicked me and for me it was the last straw. I think Masters knew it because he released the shackles, and I wanted to protest because I knew he was going to get in trouble for doing so but I was so grateful to be free of them I didn't care at that point. When they closed the door Clayton took off his top and wedged it through the chain link, and I knew he'd get cold but I didn't have the strength to protest anymore.

"When Sergeant Masters had brought me in and Colonel Broadview decided to take me back out, he told me as he was putting the shackles on me that he would get me to drop out, that after that day I would be done, that I wouldn't last through what he was going to do. After Clayton gave me his top we all curled up and tried to share body heat as best as we could and I actually managed to sleep a little even with my head and my stomach and everything else hurting. Then when the sky started to lighten but the rain and wind kept getting worse—that was when I woke Clayton up and told him I thought we were getting hit by a hurricane.

"Looking back on it now I know that there was no way he would have left all of us out there all day; that they would have brought us in eventually; but at the time all I could understand was that the rain was getting worse and Colonel Broadview had said that he was going to make me drop out. I hadn't done what he wanted the night before, when he cut my hair; I'd come close but I hadn't dropped out, and I figured he would try again by leaving me outside. If he had left me outside I would have dropped out; we went through a couple of those storms at Osan when I lived there with Pa—my father, and they aren't things to mess around with. But Clayton believed me when I told him I thought Colonel Broadview would leave me out there and he took charge of our escape, and we were really lucky to find shelter under that fallen tree for the day from the storm. It could have gone so much worse."

Yes, it could. Clayton agreed with that assessment completely. "I kind of don't really remember much about that day. I remember floating in and out of consciousness, the pain in my head and my stomach was so bad that I just wanted to sleep. I guess I must have slept off some of my exhaustion, and when I woke up I managed to get a fire going and the rest of us somewhat more comfortable. The guys remembered what I'd showed them as edible plants and they came back with some; not a lot, but it was enough for everyone to have a couple bites and improve morale. Then when I woke back up again the storm had passed and Clayton decided we were going to try and head for the airlift site. Clayton wouldn't let me walk; he had the guys make a sort of stretcher and they carried me on it until we were found by the members of his unit. I don't remember much of that, either; I think I fell asleep."

There was complete silence in the room as she stopped talking, everyone silently digesting the long road that had ultimately led here. Judge Daniels finally took a deep breath and let it out all at once, then said, "Thank you for your testimony, Corporal Arlington—"

"We aren't done yet, Your Honor," Shana said quickly, and Clayton was reminded that Shana was trying to stall for time for Alex to do…whatever she was doing. "Corporal Arlington still needs to testify as to what happened during Corporal Walker's assault and rape."

Daniels nodded, then said to Cam, "Corporal, I realize this is emotionally draining. Would you like to take a short recess, say, until after lunch, before continuing?"

"Please," Cam said, her eyes pleading.

Daniels tapped his gavel. "Court will recess until afternoon. Defense will be allowed to cross-examine Corporal Arlington after she finishes giving testimony in all matters set before this court-martial."

Out in the hall Cam turned to Shana. "How did I do?"

"You did great. You were wonderful." Shana gave her a hug. "I think we really got to them in there; I've been very careful not to contaminate the panel members and it looks like it's working, I think you have all of them on your side."

Clayton stepped in. "Charlie, go ahead and take Cam to mess and grab something to eat. I want to talk to Trial Counsel privately please." He waited until they were out of earshot before he turned on Shana. "How come I wasn't told about the details of her medical condition?"

"Clayton—"

"Don't 'Clayton' me! Shana, she is a valued member of my team. I went through all of this with her, she was in my SERE class, and even I didn't know until now that she sustained a possible concussion in the intake room, that the whole time out there during the RTL she was bleeding internally, and that she wasn't actually sleeping when we were hiding in the forest during the hurricane, she was slipping in and out of a light coma! When were you, all of you, going to tell me about this!?"

"Clayton, stop." Shana held up a hand. "We didn't tell you because Cam herself didn't want you to know. Medical files are, as you know, confidential and it is up to her to decide who she wants to release them to." She saw his look. "If it makes you feel any better, we all told her she was being an idiot about it, that she should tell you, but she insisted. However, Allie did make sure that she won't withhold details about her physical condition from her commanding officer again—she dressed Cam down thoroughly about being responsible for alerting her team to her condition, told her that if it had been a real combat situation her not alerting you to her physical deterioration would have proved a liability to the team that could have gotten all of you killed, and she gave Cam enough examples that she got the point."

Shana folded her arms, looking thoughtful. "Telling her she needs to be responsible for herself didn't really provoke a lot of reaction, but telling her that she could have put others in danger got the desired results. She's completely selfless; she dismisses her own discomfort and pain, but the thought of possibly putting anyone else with her in danger was what made her realize that next time she needs to inform her immediate superior. It's an interesting mindset, and one that Allie and I are still figuring out how to handle. Anyway, Allie disciplined Cam—had her clean the garage floors after Courtney got done taking Liv's Mustang apart."

Clayton winced at the thought of the grease and motor oil and other substances Cam would have had to try and get off the floors. "I trust she made her point clear."

"Yes. She did. So it won't happen again. Now you go and grab a bite while I prepare for the afternoon session."

Thirteen hundred saw all of them assembled back in the conference room, and Judge Daniels addressed them all first. "I have reviewed the charges and the documents submitted in support of those charges during the recess and I want to lay down some rules now. One. There will be no interrupting the witness until she has completed her testimony. Two. During cross-exam, defense may not bring up the victim's prior behavior or sexual history or anything that happened before the incident in question. Three: witness will confine herself only to the event that happened on this base during that one incident; no prior history will be brought up. Prior medical conditions will be referred to simply as 'prior medical' and details will not be requested or admitted as evidence. Are we understood?"

"Yes Sir. Thank you, Sir." She looked relieved.

Clayton frowned. _Her prior medical condition is important to explain why Walker assaulted her the way he did. Why won't the judge allow her to talk about it?_

"When I first got to this base I wasn't really in a position to notice a lot, but as I got better, Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett and Master Sergeant O'Hara introduced me to what they called the studio. It's a small mirrored room with a barre running along the wall at waist height and it's marked for women only, and they said that I was allowed to use it as I wanted to. I figured out when they were not likely to be there and I started to use the studio to dance in my evening free time, when there was little chance of anyone wanting to use it for any other purpose at the time.

"I was dancing one evening when the door opened and Corporal Walker came in. I knew who he was; he was one of the other recruits in my training class, and I knew he didn't like me much; the feeling was mutual, so I couldn't imagine what he could be doing at that time in a gender restricted area of the base. As he approached me I told him that he was trespassing on a female only portion of the base and I requested that he leave.

"He told me he had come to, as he put it, 'make peace'; he said that he was sorry for some of the comments he'd made and his attitude and he wanted me to forgive him. I told him all right, he was forgiven, could he please leave, but he remained; he then asked me if I would like to go out with him one evening, have a good time, and I told him quite firmly that I did not like him and I would not consider going out with him. He became belligerent, told me that he was just offering to, as he put it, 'get my first time out of the way' and that I couldn't have had many offers given my physical deformity.

"I got angry. Looking back now, perhaps I shouldn't have taken it out on him, but all I could think of was that he hadn't ever seen me naked so someone must have told him about my burn scars and the only people on base who knew about them were all command and I couldn't believe they would have violated my privacy like that. I…I swore at him, I told him to go to hell and take his 'offer' with him because there was no way in hell I was going to allow him to touch me with a ten foot pole after that insult." There was a subdued snicker from the findings panel; Clayton had to smother his own smile. He'd known Cam had a temper, but he hadn't seen much evidence of it thus far; it was a good sign. Her next words, though, wiped the smile off his face—and everyone else's.

"He lunged for me, slapped me across the face. I think I might have sworn at him; I don't really remember; but his next move was to punch me in the face. He was standing pretty close so I kicked him; I was wearing my toe shoes and the hard toes must have hurt, because he let out a yell, then lunged for me again. I kept kicking and punching at him, trying to get him to give up and go away. I didn't know why he was persisting when he should have gone already, and I called for help, hoping maybe someone would be passing by and would hear me.

"Walker ran at me, gave me a shove and sent me flying backward into one of the tall mirrors. I hit the mirror hard, and it shattered and I felt my head hit the wall hard enough that I nearly lost consciousness; I put my arms up to protect my face from the breaking glass and at this point escape was the only thing on my mind; I tried to get to the door, to get out of there. He tackled me, brought me to the floor, and he grabbed my hair and slammed my forehead into the floor.

Her voice broke, words halting and broken as she tried to speak through her sobs. "It was…surreal, It felt like I was suddenly floating over my body looking down as he tore my leotard and tights and underclothing off, and then he saw my…prior medical condition… and he swore as he…as he…put his fingers…inside me. I felt the scar tissue around my…my…" She was flushing with embarrassment, "around my…sex…tear as he tried to force his fingers inside, and then I guess he gave up…he turned me over and…and…I woke up as he shoved himself into my… into…"

Jesus Christ. Clayton understood now why she had been reluctant to testify. Just watching her fight her tears, fumble for words, try to describe the horror of what happened without using crude or unfairly prejudicial terms, was excruciating. And he also now understood why she had thanked Judge Daniels; by eliminating all mention of the details of her 'prior medical condition' she would be spared having to recount for a roomful of strangers how she'd been kept locked in a basement and rented out to pedophiles.

"He entered you from behind," Shana said softly, gently.

"Yes…he couldn't get in the…the normal way…due to my prior medical condition…so he took the next best thing… oh God, it hurt, so much, I was screaming and trying to fight him but I couldn't even get him off me, and all I could think of was to please hurry so it would stop, and finally he did finish, I heard him…he yelled 'goddamn fucking bitch' as he…as he came…and then he rolled me over and tried to shove his…his…tried to shove himself into my mouth…and I bit him. I …I shouldn't have…but it was the only way I could see to get him to stop!" There was desperation and anguish in her voice now. "He let go of me, backed up, and I tried to get away, tried to crawl away and as I looked toward the door I saw Detective Benson standing there, and she yelled something at him, and then he went after her and then Alex Cabot came into the room with her gun drawn and she ended it. As soon as I saw her with her gun out I knew it was over and it was such a relief…I passed out then."

She was shaking, tears streaming silently down her face as she sobbed out the last few words, and Clayton knew that it wasn't entirely for the benefit of trying to stall for time for Alex; the whole incident had been disgusting and traumatic and he couldn't even imagine what that must have been like, either for her or for his beloved Liv, who'd had to witness the last part of it.

Judge Daniels said, very quietly, "I am sorry for what happened, Corporal Arlington. It was heinous and reprehensible and should never have happened." He raised his voice, and now there was a hard edge to it. "Corporal Walker, stand up." Walker stood.

"Based on the evidence so far presented, I find sufficient proof that you did indeed assault and rape Corporal Arlington. You were caught in the act by an authorized civilian and a commissioned Private; evidence gathered at the scene, the photos taken at the scene of the rape, and your own admission under questioning leaves no room for misunderstanding. There is no defense you can make to that, nothing you can say that could possibly mitigate your guilt; the charge of conspiracy doesn't cover what you've done. By your own admission you conspired with Colonel Broadview to disrupt these judicial proceedings by heinously assaulting a fellow officer, an assault that included rape and forcible sodomy. I hereby find you guilty of the charges laid against you and summarily sentence you to the maximum penalty of twenty years in a military prison, to be followed by a bad conduct discharge and total forfeiture of all pay." He gestured to Stalker. "Get him out of my sight."

Lieutenant Preston made no motions in defense of his client as Walker was led away.

"In deference to the emotional state of various witnesses, I am hereby ordering a recess until tomorrow, at which time Colonel Broadview will take the stand in his own defense. I will be very interested in what you have to say, Colonel; however, please note that any further attempt to falsify or cover up your actions will result in summary justice dealt by my hand. I am not willing to waste any more of my time, the panel members' time, or strain the emotions of the witnesses any further with any attempts by you to obfuscate the truth. Think about that long and hard this evening prior to your testimony tomorrow." He tapped his gavel."Court will recess until tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred."


	9. Chapter 68:Trap

**Chapter 68: Trap**

Clayton didn't see either Alex or Shana until the next morning; neither woman had been at mess the evening before. Then again, neither had Cam or Charlie; he'd scanned the mess hall for them, didn't see them, and was about to go looking when Olivia tugged on his arm. "Leave them alone, Clayton. She's probably looking for a little privacy after what she went through in there." And seeing as how Olivia, of the two of them, had more experience with victims and difficult testimonies, he deferred to her experience and spent a quiet evening in the rec room with her playing chess. She wasn't as good at it as Alex was, but it was still enough to engage his attention until lights-out, at which time they both retired to his quarters and he snuggled up next to Liv for the night.

They dressed, went to morning mess, then headed out to the mess hall. The tone was subdued; most of base knew what had happened, had heard Cam's testimony the day before, and most were quietly shocked and stunned and horrified at what had happened.

It wasn't until Clayton and Olivia got to the courtroom that they saw Alex and Shana, deep in conversation with each other at the Trial Counsel's table. Broadview was already sitting at the defense table with Lieutenant Mitchell; Lieutenant Preston, Walker's defense counsel, sat quietly at the back of the room, an observer in the mass of observers. The courtroom was packed; every Joe on base who could manage to beg or steal time off to attend was here, and Clayton hoped none of their enemies would pick this time to surprise them because his base was probably operating on a skeleton crew only—if that.

Cam was seated in the first row of chairs; Charlie hovering right behind her. She looked pale but otherwise okay; Clayton hoped they'd wrap soon because this was too much pressure for her. If this dragged on too long…

He was startled out of his reverie as he saw Lieutenant Preston come toward them. Shana and Alex saw him coming, and both women tensed, but it was to Cam that Preston went, and he stopped in front of her, looking somehow awkward. "Corporal Arlington?"

Cam stood and saluted, showing no evidence of the nervousness she had to be feeling. "Sir."

"Corporal. I…know his is poor recompense, but…I am sorry for what happened. It was shameful and disgraceful and it should never have happened. I…admire your bravery and courage, in fighting back even when you had already sustained such injuries that resistance should have been impossible. While I seriously doubt my client feels any remorse for what he did, I hope you will accept my personal best wishes for your recovery, both physical and emotional."

Cam seemed stunned. "I…um…thank you, Lieutenant Preston." He nodded simply and returned to his seat as Judge Daniels tapped his gavel.

"This court martial will now come to order. Glad to see we're all here," he nodded to Alex sitting at the trial counsel's table.

Alex was completely poker-faced, and so was Shana. Neither woman was going to betray whatever it was Alex had worked on the day before, apparently, although Clayton was sure that was a hint of smugness in Shana's face, a tilt in the set of Alex's shoulders, that said the two women had something up their sleeves. And then he looked behind him and saw definite satisfaction on Allie and Courtney's faces, saw Courtney lean over and whisper something in Cam's ear, after which Cam relaxed considerably.

Alex turned, saw Olivia sitting next to Clayton, and gave her a single wink. Just that, no more, but Clayton felt Olivia relax next to him, and he looked at her suspiciously. "Do you know something I don't know?"

Olivia looked at Alex. Alex touched Shana's sleeve, nodded her head toward Clayton. Shana got that merrily wicked look in her eyes that he was used to seeing from her whenever she pulled a prank on base, and shook her head. Olivia shrugged. "You'll see," she told Clayton.

Clayton stared at her. At Alex and Shana's straight backs, at Courtney and Allie and Cam. _God help Colonel Broadview_, he thought with some amusement. _When The Girls get together, they can build or destroy anything they want to._ He almost felt pity for Broadview.

Almost.

"The defense calls as its witness Colonel Thomas Broadview," Lieutenant Mitchell said, and Broadview stood, straightened, and headed for the witness stand. Clayton saw the arrogant tilt of the man's shoulders and thought, _You have no idea what's coming for you, do you. The Girls are about to tear you apart and I have no pity for you whatsoever. None at all._

As if in reflection of his thoughts, Conrad and Dash leaned forward from where they were sitting behind Clayton and whispered simultaneously in Clayton's ear, "They're planning something."

He nodded slightly in response but said nothing else; Broadview had been sworn in and was about ready to speak. Mitchell had just asked him a question about his years of experience.

"I have been a SERE instructor for about five years now, and that has been five years of exemplary service. No complaints like this have ever surfaced before."

"Please tell us the story from your point of view." Mitchell responded.

Broadview settled himself comfortably in his chair. "I first saw Corporal Arlington getting off the transport at Camp Mackall from Fort Bragg. She was dressed and moved like every other soldier, so I was a little surprised when Walker pointed her out as a 'she' and I took her cover off and found out she was in fact, a girl. I guess my first thought was surprise. I knew this was a SERE-C class, and women are hardly ever sent through SERE-C because the military recognizes that women are inherently weaker and unable to withstand the rigors—"

"Objection!" Shana shot to her feet. "Speculation only, nowhere in any military manual does it say that this is what the military as a whole thinks of women."

"Sustained. Colonel Broadview, you will preface any remarks of that kind by saying this is your personal opinion."

Broadview looked slightly irritated, but corrected his testimony. "It has been my experience, based on observation of the few female trainees I have seen in my five years of being an instructor for the SERE-C courses, that women are generally unable to handle the rigors of Level C training. In five years I can count a total of ten women who have gone through my SERE-C class and six of them dropped out partway through the course. Only four have completed the course successfully, and Corporal Arlington is not among those four."

Clayton gritted his teeth, but Olivia laid a hand on his arm, and he read her unspoken warning there. _Let Alex and Shana handle this._ He subsided.

"I was surprised. I didn't think she quite understood the magnitude of what she was attempting to do. But she insisted that she wanted to take the course, then and there, that she was fully cognizant of the hardships she would endure and was prepared to be treated exactly the same as the other trainees. I attempted to find a way out that would be best for her—in my opinion women are stubborn when they get an idea into their heads of what they want to do even when it's not good for them—by telling her that she would have to wait until I had a group of three other women to go through it with her, but she reiterated that she wanted to be treated exactly the same. And then General Abernathy spoke up for her, telling me that he had confidence in her abilities and skills and he would train with her; and then two others volunteered, and although I knew she was ultimately going to fail, I still made the mistaken decision to allow her to go through with the training. That was my mistake, and I freely admit to it."

He went on. "From the beginning I noticed that the other SERE trainees seemed divided as to her mere presence. Team A, which was the team Corporal Walker was on and where she should have been since the rest of Team A were from her same training group at Fort Benning, didn't like her, didn't want her, and I understood that to mean that they had no confidence in her ability to pass the course, that she didn't have the skills required. Upon finding that this course was not necessary for her—since women are not allowed in front of the forward line of troops, she was never going to need a lot of the skills she was learning in Ranger school; because of her gender, she was going to be support only and SERE-C certification was not a necessary part of her service record, so I focused my attention on those for whom SERE-C was a necessary part of their training, who would not be able to advance in their careers without it.

"I saw the divisiveness in the ranks of the trainees because of her gender and I realized that they would not pass the teamwork portion of the course if they continued to be divided about her presence. I therefore began to show a marked prejudice against her in an effort to draw the other trainees together, to unify them. I didn't care if they were unified against me for the way they perceived I was treating her; the point was to bring them together, to remove the element of divisiveness from their midst either by perceived prejudice or by getting her to drop out so that they could successfully finish the course.

"Team B, her team, was an immediately cohesive unit, no doubt under the expert leadership of their Team Leader, General Abernathy. The other two teams were either indifferent or directly hostile to her, and at the time that the RTL portion of the course started, I could see no other way to remove her divisive influence than by getting her to drop out. Once she had dropped out the soldiers who needed the course to continue in their careers could, and the element of divisiveness that had characterized this class thus far would end.

"Having long hair hanging past the collar is against rules. Just because she was female didn't exempt her from those rules, so after I finished with her PT I cut her hair. I admit I did it in somewhat dramatic fashion, but the end result was that I achieved my goal. At that moment I felt the trainees attitude shift, the divisive element was removed, and they were finally working as a team, 'captives' finally united against their 'captors'. I wanted to ensure that the lesson had been learned, so I left them in the pens that night, fully intending to take them all inside the barracks the next morning before the storm reached full strength. My only orders to Company A was that no avenue of escape should be left open to them, so they wouldn't try to attempt escape into the worsening conditions. I did not anticipate their ability to engineer an escape—again I credit General Abernathy for the cleverness—and make their way out into the forest. I knew they would be okay, however; they are soldiers in the US Army and they knew how to survive out there, so when a G4 landed and the soldiers crewing it said they were from General Abernathy's base come to look for them, I was resistant to the idea of them going out to look because I didn't see the need to send any more personnel out when every hand available was needed back at base to clear fallen branches and debris and restore power.

"I had no idea Walker was going to do what he did. I remember him as being very anxious to curry favor with those in charge, he was willing to do practically anything he was ordered to. I met him in the mess hall at the start of the prior phase of the court martial process and he mentioned how it wasn't fair that Corporal Arlington should be able to bring a distinguished colonel down at the height of his career. I told him it didn't matter, that she wasn't going to get far in her career because of the emotional baggage she was carrying around, and he asked me what I meant, and I told him about Corporal Arlington's CPTSD flashback in the intake room. He seemed surprised, said he hadn't known anything was wrong with her when they were both posted to the same Ranger battalion at Fort Benning, and I told him I wasn't sure if Fort Benning had even known because it wasn't in her personnel file. He asked if that would be considered a mental illness, and I said yes, that if they knew about it here nothing she said would be admissible, and he said thank you and walked away. I never knew he was even thinking about doing anything like…what he did."

Clayton was stewing. Oh yes you did, you son of a bitch, you sure as hell did know what he was going to do! But he couldn't say anything, as badly as he wanted to. Colonel Broadview had made it a point to bring Clayton's name up at every opportunity, flattering him with each mention; it was a transparent attempt to influence him and Trial counsel and he couldn't tell it was just annoying Clayton, Shana and Alex even more.

"So all along you had the trainees interests in mind. You wanted to be sure they understood the concepts of teamwork, of fairness, of each person pulling their own weight and working together, and when you sensed that divisiveness in this class of trainees you did what you could to eliminate it. All along you had your trainees best interests in mind." Mitchell said.

"Yes," Broadview affirmed.

"No further questions, Your Honor." Preston retired to his seat as Shana stood up.

"So you had your trainees best interests in mind, did you?" Her voice wasn't accusatory, it was mild. Gentle. One would have almost thought she was conceding the point if they didn't know her, Clayton, watching her, knew that calm was a front, a shell; she was pissed and ready to tear Broadview apart, and he was willing to bet from the scribbled notes that had passed between her and Alex, that she was fully able to.

"Yes. I wanted to get them working together as a team."

"Was that why you threatened Team B that if Corporal Arlington dropped out they would all fail? I would hardly call that having everyone's best interest in mind."

"Completion of the SERE-C course was not required for either Corporal Arlington or General Abernathy; and Kenneth Ryder was going to be transferred to airborne wing support after the class wrapped, which made it a moot point for him. The only person on the team for whom completion was necessary to further his career goals was Shawn Miller, and I was planning to pass him anyway even if Corporal Arlington did drop out."

"You would have passed him? But not General Abernathy or Corporal Arlington or Corporal Ryder, simply because it wasn't necessary? Who were you to determine what was and what was not necessary?"

"It was not necessary for their career goals! General Abernathy is already a two-star general and has his own command, this was merely supposed to be a refresher course for him after some classified operation that took place earlier this summer. And Corporal Arlington is female, and she was never going to be forward of the front line of troops so this course wasn't necessary, and I knew that even before her commanding officer told us in his office!"

And as he said it a picture sprang vividly into Hawk's mind. Sitting in Hilton's office, listening to Hilton's profuse apologies, talking to Base Commander Shelton Dixon over vidphone screen about Cam and Walker's personnel records _as Hilton passed Broadview a personnel folder with Cam's name on it._

Personnel records were housed in sectioned folders that were a different color from the regular manila file folders of everyday files. Medical folders were similarly a different color. "Son of a—" he bit off the rest of what he was about to say as Alex handed him a yellow legal pad with the hastily scrawled words _Clayton shut up!_ on it. Simultaneously Olivia elbowed him subtly in the ribs.

He looked up and met Alex's eyes, and what he was about to say froze on his lips. She knew, damn it, he didn't know how she knew but she did! She and Shana both knew Broadview had seen Cam's personnel file before the start of the RTL, and if they could prove it all the charges that had been dropped due to Broadview's 'ignorance' of her personnel and medical files would be reinstated!

"How did you know?" Shana sprang her trap before Broadview could realize the significance of the exchange going on at the Trial Counsel's table.

Broadview stared at her in shock.

"How. Did. You. Know. Answer the question, Colonel Broadview. If you had not seen Cameron Arlington's personnel file before that meeting in Base Commander Hilton's office, how did you know what her career goals were and what certifications and courses she needed to achieve them?"

Broadview was silent.

Judge Daniels' voice finally broke it. "I will assume from your continued silence to Trial Counsel's question that you cannot answer it. I must, therefore, also conclude that your earlier assertions of innocence due to ignorance of Corporal Arlington's medical and personnel files and records was a lie, and you have therefore committed perjury under oath. I am hereby reinstating those charges; the findings panel will therefore add those charges back to their list of findings to be deliberated over." He took a deep breath. "However, this court-martial has already taken up far too much time and resources, and I am unwilling to put certain witnesses through the emotional stress of re-testifying. Therefore, a decision will need to be made by the findings panel on the reinstated charges based on existing testimony. The written testimonies of the witnesses and defendant will be made available to you and audio recordings of these proceedings will also be made available should you require them. Court will now recess for the findings panel to deliberate."


	10. Chapter 69:Sentence

**Chapter 69: Sentence**

"You knew!" Clayton rounded on Shana and Alex as the door to the conference room closed behind them. "You knew Broadview knew about Cam's record! How did you find out?"

"Masters said it in his testimony. He got information about Cam from her personnel folder sitting on Halloran's desk while she was in intake. That meant Halloran had gotten it sometime before—and if he got it, then so did Broadview. I just had to establish the timeframe by asking Masters about the personnel record, then he let me talk to Colonel Potter, the CMO, and then Colonel Halloran, who is handling training now, and then I had to get approval to speak to Colonel Hilton over at Leavenworth. That's what took me so long yesterday, that's why I had to ask Shana and Cam to stall." Alex looked smug…but then, Clayton reflected, she had a right to be.

"It was all Alex's doing. She caught the discrepancy. Oh, and Masters also said in his written testimony that it wasn't the first time he'd seen Broadview engaging in questionable behavior toward female trainees, but it was the first time it ever went this far—"

"I wondered about that," Clayton frowned.

"Can't introduce it now, but we were keeping it up our sleeves in case we needed it. Masters was quite detailed. There was a woman in one of the SERE-A classes this spring that Masters said Broadview had a hard-on for, he took every opportunity to cut her down and degrade her and humiliate her. She dropped out. In fact, Colonel Halloran said that since Broadview took over, the number of women who have passed SERE-C has dropped precipitately, and the SERE-A classes have experienced a similar downslide. Cam's lucky Broadview was on leave when she took SERE-A a year ago otherwise she would have run up against him then too. Halloran is in the middle of reviewing all the personnel folders of all the trainees that didn't pass, figuring out if it was Broadview's blatant sexism that caused them to fail, and petitioning the higher-ups to allow those that failed to retake the course. It's a huge mess, and he said to tell you thank you."

"Seriously or sarcastically?"

"Seriously. He hadn't been aware of all of this, he did think it odd that so many women weren't completing the course, but he left the decisions up to Colonel Hilton and didn't question them; he's mostly the classroom instructor, Broadview was the field instructor. He wanted me to tell you 'thank you' because if you hadn't made everyone aware of what was going on with this court-martial, the process would have continued to be unfair for everyone and eventually someone would have died. Cam would have died this time if you hadn't already gone through hyperthermia this summer with Olivia and recognized the signs and alerted everyone."

Olivia laid a hand on Clayton's arm. "Well, then, I'm glad I went through it," she said quietly.

"No. I'm not. None of this should have been necessary, none of this should have ever happened!" Clayton was angry now, anger borne of helplessness. "Why does Broadview hate women so much? Why Cam? Did Halloran or Colonel Potter ever say why Broadview hates women so much?"

"Colonel Halloran said that Broadview's father was killed at Pearl Harbor. He had just been born, and his mother blamed anyone of Asian descent. Growing up all Broadview heard from his mother was racial epithets against Asians, and it made a deep impression on him, but at the same time he was absorbing his mother's hatred of Asians he was also growing to secretly dislike her attitude."

"So he didn't like women because of his mother, and he doesn't like Asians because of his father. Don't you guys have psych evaluations for people who want to become soldiers?" Olivia sounded incredulous. "How did he get away with it for so long?"

"He hid it pretty well, didn't allow it to show in front of anyone that mattered. It was only when someone came in front of him that was female, Asian, subordinate, and didn't appear to have a good support system that he felt he had free rein to express his dislike. Unluckily for him, your consideration for someone isn't limited to how well you know them, but Clayton, if you hadn't been in this class, Cam would have died."

"Thank you," Cam said quietly from behind them, and he turned to see her. "Thank you for everything, Clayton. I owe you a huge one. Anything you want, anytime, anywhere. I swear it on the Ancestors."

Clayton grinned crookedly at her. "Watch what you promise—I just might take you up on that offer one day."

She didn't smile back; she was completely serious. "I will look forward to it."

Alex checked her watch. "How long do you think it'll take for them to deliberate? I'm hungry and I want to grab a bite, or at least some coffee, before we reconvene. Legal tapdancing is exhausting."

Shana looked at hers. "I don't think it's going to take long at all, I think we pretty much made up all their minds for them, but I'm sure you have time for at least a cup of coffee. I could use one myself—now I know why you lawyers drink so much of it. I feel like I just went six rounds with Snake Eyes on the mat and it's only noon." Her cheerful grin belied her words, "Okay, let's go grab some coffee. Anybody else want some?"

The two women came back shortly with cups for themselves, Clayton, and Charlie; Cam and Olivia declined, and they sat down to drink. Alex and Shana refused to talk about the trial, and Clayton understood, so the conversation was mostly focused on what Charlie and Cam were doing with their spare time up on the reservation. Shana and Alex and Olivia ribbed Cam and Charlie mercilessly about the addition Jennifer Aiennatha had had the tribe build onto Cam's cottage, and the new bed she'd had to get.

Cam refused to rise to the good-natured baiting, stating only that she and Charlie had found plenty of uses for both the new bed and the new bedroom, and Clayton almost choked on his coffee at the mental pictures that evoked, which in turn brought muffled laughter from everyone. To hide the flush on his face he got up and stepped away, followed by Charlie, leaving the girls to sit and gossip and chat.

"Joking aside, Charlie, just how serious is this?" Clayton asked once the flush had receded from his face. "I'm not upset, but I do know that you haven't had a steady girlfriend before, and this thing with Cam came up pretty suddenly."

"I want to marry her," Charlie said with perfect gravity. "I have made a point of sharing with the work in the village so that her people will accept me, and I have been spending a great deal of time with Jennifer, learning the ways of a medicine man of Cam's people. Our customs and traditions are somewhat different; if she were to marry me she would have to come live on my reservation as the wife of a Dine medicine man, but if I were to marry her I would live on her reservation as the husband of a Haudenosaunee medicine woman."

It was on the tip of Clayton's tongue to say 'what's the difference?' but he could tell from Charlie's tone that there was one, so he decided to bite his tongue for the moment. "So what are you going to do?"

"I will become the husband of a medicine woman of the Haudenosaunee," Charlie said. "It does not matter to me that I lose the status of medicine man; it is a small loss compared to the joy of knowing that I will always be there for her, that she will be by my side for the rest of her life, that I will have the privilege of being able to avenge the wrongs done her and celebrate the joys and happiness in her life." He turned dark eyes to Clayton, and they were haunted. "She has nightmares. Terrible nightmares. And I hold her as she cries and I want to hunt down the people who hurt her. I do not know how she can wake up each morning with a smile on her face when this is what lies in her heart, I do not know how she can still find the good in people when all she has known is ugliness, and I want to spend the rest of my life protecting her from that."

Clayton felt the grin spread over his face. "Congratulations. You are going to invite us to the wedding, right? Shana and Allie and Courtney and Alex and Liv will kill you if you don't. Cam is as much their teammate now as you are, despite the fact that she hasn't gone on a mission yet with any of you. She's been quite firmly established as one of 'The Girls'."

"We will most likely have a traditional wedding in the manner of her people, but yes, when we do you will be invited. I still have to bring my family, my mother, up here to meet Cam and Jennifer to conduct the clan negotiations, but I don't think there will be a difficulty there. Her tribe is already aware of my intentions; there will be no repeat of what happened with the other boy that broke her heart. I will not break hers and I will fight any one who does." The last was said in a fierce tone that left no doubt in Clayton's mind that Charlie would do just that.

The door to the conference room opened, and Clayton and Charlie both turned even as the girls rose from the chairs where they had been sitting. "Court is ready to reconvene," Allie said. "The findings panel's done deliberating."

Cam went pale; Charlie stepped quickly over to her, took her hand, squeezed it. She looked up at him, smiled, and they both walked back into the courtroom, backs straight, heads high, ready for anything as long as they were together. Clayton watched them go in, then smiled as he felt Liv's hand creep into his own, and he walked into the courtroom holding her hand. Whatever the panel decided, this was all going to be over in another half hour at most, and they would all be free to get on with their lives. Clayton scanned the courtroom quickly; if anything the place was even more packed than it had been that morning. He'd bet his pension that some of the people in this room might have shirked duty just to be here for the sentencing.

"The court martial will now come to order. Have the members reached a sentence?"

Mainframe stood; he seemed to have been elected the panel president, and he cleared his throat now. "We have."

Daniels turned to Broadview. "Would Defense Counsel and Trial counsel stand please?" Everyone stood. "Would you announce the findings please."

Mainframe cleared his throat. "We find the defendant Colonel Thomas Broadview guilty of all specifications and charges preferred against him by the convening authority and hereby sentence you to the maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and dishonorable discharge upon completion of the sentence with total forfeiture of all pay accordingly."

Broadview went pale. Clayton, looking at him, almost felt pity for him. Almost. Because superimposed over the image of Broadview's pale face was the mental picture of Cam screaming as she yanked against the dog leash and shackles, tears streaming down her face as her hair was hacked off.

"As the military judge in charge of this proceeding, it is now my responsibility to find on the charges of conspiracy, and I find you guilty of conspiring to disrupt these proceedings in an attempt to circumvent justice for your own ends. I must admit that I am horrified at the callous disregard you have shown toward a trainee under your care, and disgusted that your blatant, callous negligence nearly caused the death of said trainee, Corporal Arlington.

"The US Army entrusts the training of its new assets to your care, and you abused that trust when you abused and maltreated that trainee. Then you sought to cover up evidence of your wrongdoing first by continuing her training as though nothing had happened, then by obstructing General Abernathy's team from mounting a rescue, and even though no evidence has been found yet tying you to the deplorable incident in which ICE was informed that Corporal Arlington was not a legal citizen, the timing is quite suspicious and I would not put it past you. Defense counsel, if you would take Mr. Broadview to the brig and advise him of his appellate rights on the way there we can then bring this shameful chapter to a close." He gestured to the MPs in the room, who took Broadview's arms and walked him away, with Mitchell following.

"General Abernathy," Daniels looked at Clayton, who immediately stood. "You are to be commended for your quick thinking and persistence and determination in bringing attention to the egregious negligence displayed by Mr. Broadview. Your care and consideration for Corporal Arlington, though she was not your subordinate at the time, exemplifies the best of what we expect from our commanding officers and you show exactly why the US Army has chosen you to command this base and these soldiers."

He shifted his focus to Cam. "Corporal Arlington. Your personnel record will be amended to reflect successful completion of the SERE-C course, as well as the records of the three teammates you so bravely tried to shield. I am sorry that it came down to this; this was much more difficult than it had to be, and I assure you that much closer supervision will be given to the training course after this, so no one will have to endure what you went through this time. I am pleased to see that you have recovered health and spirits after this entire fiasco, and while I realize that emotional healing after what Mr. Walker and Mr. Broadview did to you will be a much longer process, hopefully seeing the culmination of this trial will bring you some closure and a measure of peace. I am aware that while you were in ICE custody your human rights and civil rights were violated; your commanding officer and his superior has levied a formal complaint against them with the appropriate authorities and will, I suspect, follow through. In the meantime, thank you for your testimony in these court-martial proceedings and I wish you a speedy recovery and a long, productive career with the US Army." His eyes flicked to Shana and Alex. "Trial Counsel, thank you for your service to this court-martial and these proceedings. This court martial is now adjourned." He tapped his gavel.

A resounding cheer went up from the assembled Joes packing the room from wall to wall, and Clayton grinned at Cam's startled, befuddled look as she was suddenly swamped with well-wishers and hugs. "What, you thought you were going to slip away unnoticed?"

"Yeah, I sorta did. I haven't been here that long, I hardly even know anybody so all of this sort of came as a shock."

Clayton had called a small, informal briefing in the small conference room that Allie had used to sift through the trunk of papers they'd brought back from the reservation. The papers were all organized, tucked neatly away, and the trunk sat at one end of the table while Clayton, Allie, Shana, Alex, Cam and Charlie sat at the other, but they were all dressed casually, off-duty, and Charlie and Cam were scheduled to leave in an hour, heading back upstate to the reservation.

"What Walker did was an offense against the entire base. All of our guys took it very personally. While the original 'no boyz aloud' sign was meant to be a joke, the guys understood that girls need some private space and they were perfectly happy to grant that to us, and the 'no girlz aloud' room was simply their way of insisting on equality. Walker violated that and it was a very personal offense against the honor of the entire male population here." Clayton said. "So there isn't a single person on this base who wasn't hoping for guilty verdicts and some sort of prison sentence. Now, I assume you're heading back upstate to enjoy the rest of your 'vacation?'"

"Yes."

"I'm not including this court martial week in your leave time; you still have four more weeks. Go ahead and take them and I'll see you in mid December—actually, since it's going to be so close to Christmas, go ahead and stay until the beginning of January. I want to see both of you back here in January 2nd, okay?"

"Aye sir." Cam saluted smartly; Charlie followed suit.

"And another thing—go ahead and take this with you," Allie indicated the trunk, and her face was serious. "I'm pretty sure there isn't really anything in there you're going to want to keep except the letters the Hammonds wrote you, but other than that you can dispose of it all as you like, keep it or throw it away."

"Or burn it," Shana added angrily, then her face cleared and she returned to her usual sunny self. "However, if you two do decide to get married while you're up there, you are hereby ordered to let your immediate supervisor—Allie and I—know, and you are required to let your commanding officer—Clayton—know. Even if we can't make the trip up here we can at least celebrate down here in your honor, okay?"

"I promise we'll let you know." Cam nodded solemnly, but there was a ghost of a twinkle in her eyes, and no one missed the way her hand crept into Charlie's. Or the way he squeezed hers back.

"You especially have to let me know so I can decide where to put you," Allie said with mock ferocity. "We've never had married couples here before so we don't have quarters arranged for the purpose, and I'll have to do some juggling with rooms to find one for both of you." She grinned at Cam's nonplussed look. "What, you thought you'd just resume your old quarters? Not going to happen. We are not going to split up a family, not while I'm Staff Sergeant here."

Clayton grinned at Charlie. "All right, enough chatter. Charlie, I'll help you get that trunk into your jeep and you two can be on your way."

**Author's Note: And that's it for SERE. Hang in there, though, we're not done yet. The next book in this series is called 'Secrets', but before we get there, here's a private look at Cam and Charlie's life together. This is the edited/censored version; for complete version please email me at jaenelleangelline79 . Enjoy!**

Chapter 1: Home

Charlie reached down and ran a hand through Cam's hair. "Wake up, sweetheart, we're almost home."

Cam, curled up in the front seat next to him, opened her eyes but didn't immediately move. She'd been sleepy and Charlie had suggested she lie down, but with the trunk and their bags across the back seat there wasn't much room, so she'd lain across the front seat with her head in Charlie's lap, and she'd fallen asleep with his hand gently stroking her hair.

Now she turned her head to look up at him and smiled. "It's so nice to be able to relax for a little while. It was incredibly generous of Clayton to give us a month—and not take the week of the court martial out of it. And we don't have to be back until January!" She sat up and stretched now, working kinks out of her back.

Charlie pulled into the small cleared dirt space in front of her cottage and parked. "We don't have to go back if you don't want to," he said seriously. "There is a life outside of the military and you do love it here, I can see happiness just radiating off you."

Cam shook her head as she reached into the back seat and grabbed her duffel bag. "No, I do want to go back. Having spent two years in the Army, as much as I like it here now I think I'd get pretty bored after a while. But it is nice to be home." She opened the front door. "Let me drop off my things and I'll come help you bring the trunk in."

She stepped into her living room. Everything was just the way she'd left it, although, at Charlie's insistence, she now owned a few more things. The couch was still there, but now there was a low coffee table and a small end table with a lamp and a couple of remotes for the big TV that was quickly becoming her guilty pleasure.

She now had a decent table with four chairs for her kitchen, and her bathroom now had two toothbrushes in the holder, something that gave her a little thrill of happiness whenever she saw them sitting side by side. Her refrigerator was now stocked with food for two rather than just one, and her studio was bare, now, just the small stool with a boom box and her music CDs.

She shook her head smiling as she stepped through the new door in the far end of her studio and into her new bedroom. In comparison with her studio, it was huge, large enough for the king-sized bed that reposed along the far wall, under the window so the sun could touch her face when she woke in the morning; large enough for the two small his-and-hers end tables on either side of the bed; and two medium-sized three-drawer dressers on the far wall.

"This is more furniture than I've ever owned at one time in my life!" she'd exclaimed to Jennifer when she and Charlie had gotten back from their day trip to Buffalo. She hadn't understood why he'd dragged her out there, although she had enjoyed shopping and spending some of the money she earned as an Army Corporal but rarely ever spent. Not much, just a new pair of boots, another pair of black dancing sneakers (her old ones were getting very worn) and new pink tights and a black leotard, and then she let Charlie talk her into spending a little bit to get her hair trimmed so it was even and no longer shaggy, styled to hide the uneven patches still too close to her scalp, and bought a couple of barrettes to hold her hair out of her face while she was dancing.

She hadn't had any inkling of how completely her house was going to be changed in her absence, and she wasn't entirely sure she liked it when she looked at it for the first time. She couldn't exactly ask them to take it apart—they had gone to so much trouble—but the new addition blocked sun from half her garden and she was going to have to plow over half of it and expand it out the other way if she wanted to get anything decent out of it the next spring.

However, that evening as she relaxed in that big bed next to Charlie, she had to admit that she liked the idea. And when she woke up the next morning to sunshine from the new window outlining the chiseled planes of Charlie's face just inches from hers on his own pillow, she had to admit that yes, she liked this new bedroom very much indeed.

She dropped her backpack on her side of the bed now and turned, heading back out to the Jeep only to find Charlie coming back in with the trunk. "Charlie!" she exclaimed, flying across her living room to grab one handle of the box. "I told you I'd come right back out to help!"

"I didn't need help," he told her cheerfully, his smile highlighting the dimple in his cheek that she was rapidly coming to adore. "Where would you like me to put this?" He put it down on the floor and stared at it, his eyes going dark. "Or do you want to take it straight out back and burn it?"

"No, I want to go through it all first." As much as she was dreading looking at it.

"Cam." He took her shoulders in his hands, turning her to look at him. "Allie already went through it. There is nothing in there you need to look at except maybe the Hammonds' letters."

She shook her head. "Charlie, please. This is something I have to do. Just…stick it in the pantry." He slid it across the floor to an empty spot on the floor of the kitchen pantry and closed the door.

She forcibly put it out of her mind. "All right. I don't know about you, but I'm starving. Let's get something to eat." She pulled open the refrigerator, studied its contents. In anticipation of the court martial taking a week, she'd given perishables to Jennifer, and meat went into the freezer; now, looking at it, she couldn't figure out a single thing to cook.

"Hello!" came a cheery voice from the door, and Cam and Charlie both turned to see Jennifer coming in carrying a covered dish. "I saw you drive up, and I knew it was a little late to go to the store, so I figured some food wouldn't be a bad thing."

"Jennifer, you are a lifesaver. I was just wondering what we were going to have for dinner."

"Besides each other?" Jennifer gave her a wicked smile. Cam blushed pink as Charlie's roar of laughter filled the cottage.

"No, I'll have her for desert." Cam blushed redder, and Charlie chuckled as he came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned over to rub his cheek in her hair.

"She's certainly sweet enough." Jennifer's smile grew wider.

"Guys! Enough!" Cam disentangled herself from Charlie's embrace and busied herself with getting out plates and tableware. "Will you eat with us, Jennifer?"

"Oh, no, I've already eaten. I'll just leave this with you and leave you two lovebirds to get on with it." Jennifer winked and was gone, leaving Cam shaking her head in mock dismay at the spot Jennifer had occupied scant moments before.

"She's even more of a mother hen than I remembered." Cam sighed as she sat down.

Charlie grinned as he sat down in the chair next to her. "Don't be too hard on her, sweetheart. She is a medicine woman; she has a responsibility to heal, and that responsibility doesn't stop with the physical. She knew how your Aunt and Uncle wounded your soul as well as your body, and she simply wants to make sure you are healing, physically, mentally and emotionally."

Dinner proved to be a thick, savory beef-and-vegetable-and-potato stew, and there was so much of it that when Cam and Charlie both declared themselves full there was still plenty left. "There's enough left for breakfast tomorrow, which was probably her intent. Let me put this in another dish and put it in the fridge, then I'll wash the dishes and come to bed. If you're tired you can go on ahead."

"Sure. I'll be waiting when you come in." He grabbed his duffel bag and headed off toward the bedroom, and she hummed happily as she washed the dishes and put them in the dish rack to dry, then headed for the bedroom, wondering if she should unpack tonight or just wait until tomorrow.

She was completely unprepared for what she did see when she walked in.

The lights were off, but they didn't need to be on because every flat surface in the room had lit candles sitting on it. Her backpack had vanished, and instead the entire bed was liberally sprinkled with rose petals. Her mouth fell open. "Charlie…how…"

"While you were sleeping I stopped and bought a dozen from a roadside vendor." He was nude, and she couldn't take her eyes off him, off the powerful, sinewy muscles playing under candlelit bronzed skin, as he crossed the bedroom toward her, his gait slow and seductive. By the time his hands came up to unbutton her top, she couldn't think of anything but him. "I've seen you dancing to that song 'Bed of Roses' and I know you like it." Her shirt came off, followed by her bra, one specially made to hide the asymmetrical shape of her chest, and his hands went to her belt and the zipper. "I wanted to do that for you, just once, so you would know how it felt."


	11. Chapter 2: Gowanda

**Chapter 2: Gowanda**

"What a mess." She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the wreckage of the bedroom.

Charlie looked at the crushed rose petals on the bedspread, the pools of wax stuck to the tops of the night tables and dressers, and grinned. "But it was worth it."

"Um. Yeah." She really did look cute when she blushed. "It was definitely worth it."

"I'll get the candles unstuck if you want to take the bedspread out and shake the rose petals off it." She nodded, and he helped her gather the corners of the bedspread and bundle the blanket up to a manageable bundle she could carry outside, where there was a clothesline strung between the side of her cottage and a nearby convenient tree.

She was trying to drape the blanket over the clothesline and not drop any of it when Jennifer came up the path and saw her fighting with it. Before Cam could say anything, Jennifer had grabbed one end and threw it over the clothesline, and a shower of rose petals, some whole, some crushed, fell to the ground. Jennifer leaned over, picked one up, and looked at it. Looked at Cam. Looked at the cabin, where she could see a shirtless Charlie trying to get a candle unstuck from the night table it had melted to, then looked back at Cam, who was trying not to squirm…and failing.

"Looks like it was an interesting night."

"Er. Uh, I guess you could sorta say that."

Jennifer grinned at her, then sobered. "Cam. I don't want to get in your business, but…you are making sure that you're not going to get pregnant, right?"

Cam sobered as she went about hanging her side of the bedspread up. "Yes, Jennifer, I am. I saw a doctor who gave me birth control pills, and I'm considering getting implants. Every doctor who has seen me has told me the same thing; if I get pregnant it'll likely cost me my life because my body is so badly damaged that I will not be able to carry a baby full term."

"I'm sorry, Cam. I know it's hard, especially now that you have a man you love, and who loves you back—"

Cam sighed and sat down in the grass—it was unusually warm, for a November day in upstate New York—and Jennifer sat down with her. "Jennifer, I know I should be a little more bothered about this, but honestly, I'm not. At this moment in my life I'm perfectly happy not having kids; we're going back to base after the New Year when our leave time is up and I can't be a soldier and have kids at the same time, not at this classified military base for this classified project. I can't explain it any better than that but let's just say kids aren't in the picture."

"Not to mention which, you aren't even married yet."

"Jennifer, I know he loves me and he says he wants to marry me but I…well, I'm finding it hard to make that kind of commitment." She saw her friend's look. "Not because I don't love him, but because…well…look at me." She spread her hands wide. "He says that all he wants is me, but what if that's just for now? He's strong, handsome, just…perfect. And I'm…weak and ugly and not even a whole woman, I have to wear bras with stuffing in one side just to look normal, and I'm…afraid that when the newness wears off he'll…want someone better, someone worthy of him, and I will feel so guilty for tying him down to me because I was selfish." Her voice broke on the last word. "I want someone to share my life with, Jennifer, someone who I love and who loves me in return, but I...it's hard for me to believe that someone so perfect wants plain little, ugly little me. He's shown me so much…I have never felt pleasure before with a man, ever, until him, and with him I'm alive, I'm better, I'm whole, I'm stronger when he's with me and I'm so afraid of losing him but I don't want to tie him to me if that's not what he really wants…or if he changes his mind later, and that will kill me."

Jennifer hugged her tightly. "If it's any consolation, Cam, I really don't see that happening. I look at that man and he worships the ground you walk on. You keep saying he deserves someone better than you, but what if he doesn't want anyone else? Remember Adam? Did you ever feel for him what you feel for Charlie?"

"Never. Not even a tenth." Cam's voice was firm, decisive, as she let go of Jennifer and wiped her eyes with the tail of her shirt. "I think…I had a crush on him, I loved him but I wasn't in love with him. With Charlie, though…there's no question. Everything in me loves him; I don't feel complete when he's not around, I feel like a part of me is missing. Back when we were on base—I felt like I knew where he was, always, even when we weren't together, there was this invisible string between us that stretched and stretched but always brought us together again."

"I thought you were supposed to be getting the roses out of the bedspread." Charlie's voice came from behind them softly.

"I just stopped by for a quick chat. Cam and I had a little catching up to do." Jennifer put in quickly as Cam hastily composed herself before turning to meet his gaze. "Woman stuff."

"Oh," Charlie grinned. "Well, when you're done gossiping, maybe we can run to the big grocery store in Gowanda for groceries and stock the fridge? I already took the package of venison out to thaw, figured we'll do deer steaks tonight, but some greens would go well, a salad maybe."

"Store. Yes. Store sounds good." Cam turned to Jennifer. "Need anything?"

"Come to think of it, I could use a few things. You go ahead and air out those sheets. Charlie, if you could grab my dishes and bring them to my house, I can give you a list of things I need that you can get." Her tone didn't invite argument, so Charlie ducked inside the cottage, came back with the covered dish from the night before, now clean, and followed Jennifer down the road to her house.

"Do you love her?" She asked him bluntly and directly as soon as they were out of earshot of Cam's cottage.

"Yes," he answered unhesitatingly. "With everything I have and everything I am."

Jennifer blew out her breath. "I thought that was going to be your answer. She loves you that way too, she says that when you're not around she feels like a part of her is missing."

"Yes," he said quietly, thinking about that. "Yes. She is the other half of me just as I am the other half of her."

"She says that you're perfect and she isn't and she's worried that once the newness of your relationship wears off you'll decide you don't want to be tied down to a weak, ugly half-woman."

Charlie sucked in a breath. "She said that? Does she really feel that way?"

Jennifer sighed and pulled out a chair at her kitchen table, indicating Charlie should sit in the other one. "I know I told you about Adam Barefoot? The other boy Cam had a crush on, thought she loved?" Charlie nodded.

"When he turned her down in front of the family gathering he hurt her deeply, perhaps more deeply than even he realized. When he called her ugly, frigid, in front of me, in front of his family and one of the tribe's elders…it wounded her soul. I don't know if she ever recovered from it. She still considers herself as weak and ugly."

"After what she has been through no one could call her weak. She endured three years of hell in that basement, nameless faceless strangers paying her aunt and uncle money just to hurt her, to brutalize and abuse and torture her for their own amusement, and somehow she survived it, survived to become a strong, accomplished Army soldier with such good skills that she was recruited for a top-secret classified military project. She's one of the few Corporals on base; pretty much everyone is Sergeant or higher; you have to be absolutely exceptional to be recruited as a Corporal. She's one of only two female corporals, and one of only four women; one is a Master Sergeant and one is a Staff Sergeant, and Corporal Krieger is a tank jockey so she's more of a Specialist like me than a Corporal. How can she still think of herself as…she's not ugly." He finished fiercely.

"If you like, I can get some of the children in the village to distract her while we take a trip out to where she was held. We buried the trapdoor under rocks and stones and never went back; the area is saturated with fear and pain and other ugly emotions and we never wanted to go near it again. But it might help you understand some of what she thinks when she looks at herself in the mirror, some of what is in her mind when she wakes in the night."

"She…wakes up screaming. Sometimes. In the middle of the night. And she looks lost and terrified and in so much pain...I want to hold her and never let her go, I want to erase all those memories and make everything all right again." Charlie looked anguished.

"The only thing that will do that is time. Patience and love will do the rest. Be patient with her and it will be all right." Jennifer patted his hand as she stood. "All right. Let me get you that list."

Half an hour later they were on the road heading to Gowanda. Charlie frowned as the jeep hit yet another bump in the road and said, "Cam, did you go to the store in Gowanda often?"

"Not really often. Once or twice a month. Why?"

"You don't have a car. How did you get there?"

"I got a ride with someone else who was going, or I just walked."

"You walked? That far?"

"It's not that much of a hardship in spring and summer and fall; the hike is beautiful and the forest is peaceful and quiet."

Charlie shook his head. "Is there a reason you don't have a car other than the cost?"

Cam grinned. "I got my driver's license at eighteen but I can count on one hand the number of times I've been behind a wheel since then. I just…never needed to." She shrugged.

Charlie pulled over and parked. "Come here. You're driving."

"I—what?—no, Charlie, this is your Jeep, what if I crash it or something?"

He swung open his door, got out, and came around to the passenger side of the vehicle. "Move over."

"Charlie…" but he stood there doing his best 'immovable mountain' impression, and after a moment she sighed as she slid over into the driver's seat. "I'm not responsible if I crash it, it'll be your fault for making me do this."

He climbed into the passenger side. "Cam, I'm 'making' you do this because driving is an important skill for an adult. Even if you don't have a car, being able to drive opens up a lot of opportunities. And think about this; if you're on a mission with a team and they are hurt and you're the only one capable of driving you may need to steal a car to save your team."

"I guess." She conceded that point, although she looked rather doubtful.

"All right. Go ahead and drive."

Despite her doubt in her own driving abilities, they got to the grocery store in Gowanda safely and without incident. He cheered inwardly to himself as she pulled neatly into a parking space and they both got out; teaching her to drive would help her feel a little more independent, a little more free, and increase her self-confidence and her sense of self-worth, and that was worth it to him.

Shopping with her was an experience; she didn't have the slightest idea why he spent a long time looking over the spices in the spice aisle. "Cam, don't you ever cook?" he asked her finally, in exasperation, after he'd put paprika, bay leaves, and chives in the cart.

"Um, not really," she said with a shrug. "Most of the time when I'm up here I'll stock the pantry with canned goods, beans and canned spaghetti and maybe a little ground beef for some homemade spaghetti but I don't really cook."

He loaded up on lots of different spices after hearing that, then spent time in the meat section choosing cuts of beef and chicken, ham for the upcoming Thanksgiving a week and a half away, then the produce aisle for fresh greens to cook, potatoes and carrots and salad fixings, then to the canned goods aisle. Watching what she picked out taught him about her cooking and eating habits; canned beans, canned vegetables, canned spaghetti and other non-perishable items, and he shook his head as they headed for the frozen vegetables. He was going to have to teach her how to cook.

The last items to go into the cart were the items on Jennifer's list, and then they headed for the checkstand. The store had three of those automatic registers, but Cam shook her head and got in the back of the only live-cashier line. 'I don't like those machines," she said to Charlie's quizzical look. "Half the time they stop working and then you have to wait for a live person to help anyway." As if on cue, one of the self-checkout registers started beeping, and the rest of the people in the line moved to the next register.

One of them, a tall young man with thick short black curls and bright blue eyes, separated himself from the self-checkout registers and headed for the cashier lane, and Cam sucked in a sharp breath as she saw him. He saw her at about the same time, frowned a moment in puzzlement, then said "Cam? Cam Arlington?"


	12. Chapter 3: Adam

**Chapter 3: Adam**

"Adam," Cam breathed, and Charlie snapped to attention. The way she said his name, a mixture of familiarity, wistfulness, wariness, and uncertainty—this, then, was Adam Barefoot, the boy who had broken her heart and chased her away from the reservation when he'd refused her marriage offer.

"I haven't seen you in ages, how are you doing?" Adam was all smiles as he came up, pushing a cart with only a few things in it.

"Um, doing fine, I guess, I'm on leave from the Army until January. Adam, this is Charlie Ironknife, my boyfriend; Charlie, this is Adam Barefoot."

Adam held out a hand to Charlie. "Pleased to meet you."

Charlie gritted his teeth but responded politely. "And you." When he took the younger man's hand he exerted just enough pressure to make his point subtly; _she is mine_. An unspoken message passed from male to male.

Adam didn't say anything, didn't respond back, but there was speculation in his eyes when he looked at Cam, and Charlie didn't like it. _Had a couple years to think about it, decided you do like her enough, hmm? Or is it just the cottage and the land she owns, or is it the fact that you feel threatened by me?_ He smiled, and it wasn't a nice one. _Go ahead and try. You don't deserve second chances, not after what you did. _He didn't even know the boy and he already didn't like him.

It wasn't politeness that made him say, "You only have a few items in your cart, go on ahead in front of us." He wanted Adam out of there, as quickly as possible.

The idiot boy didn't get the hint. "Oh, no, I'm okay, it's an opportunity to catch up with Cam. Are you still living in that little cottage up by Jennifer's?"

"Yes," Cam said shortly as she started to put their purchases on the conveyor belt. "It's a little bit bigger now, but still mostly the same place."

"Bigger? You built an addition?"

"The tribe built it for me when Jennifer decided I needed a bigger bedroom. Now I have a studio and a bedroom." Cam sounded neutral as she emptied the rest of the cart onto the belt, stacking the canisters of spices carefully so that the glass jars wouldn't break.

"Ah. Well, I'll have to drop by and see it sometime."

"No. You don't." Cam faced him squarely. "What's done is done, Adam. You don't get to change your mind now, not after two years and what you did and said in front of my tribe elders and my clan sponsor. So you go your way, and I'll go mine." She faced Charlie now, turning her back on Adam and pointedly excluding him from her line of sight and therefore, the conversation. "So we'll load this stuff in the car. Do I get to drive back?"

He took the hint and ignored Adam, cutting the boy out of the conversation altogether. "Yeah, you could use the practice. At least I have an automatic. Driving a stick is a lot harder."

"What's the difference?" she asked, and relieved at the chance to keep talking, he launched into a long discourse on the differences between an automatic transmission and a manual, what a shifter was for, and how to change gears. Not that cars were really his thing, but Courtney was enthusiastic and everyone at base who spent any amount of time around her learned about cars and tanks and automobiles by contamination.

Finally they were done, and they loaded the cart with their bagged groceries and headed for the parking lot. Cam walked slightly faster than was strictly necessary, but he understood and they had the groceries loaded and were heading back in far less time than it would otherwise have taken.

She drove slightly erratically as they left, but the further they got from the store the more she relaxed. Finally she sighed. "Thanks, Charlie," she said, and there was real feeling in her words. "I was trying not to be really rude but if you hadn't started talking I might have had to be."

"Don't be. I just wanted to make it a little easier for you. You didn't really want to talk to him."

"No. I didn't. I'll…I'll admit, Charlie, when I saw him my heart skipped a little bit. I…had a major crush on him, he was the first guy I ever really saw myself with…but after what he did, calling me…names…in front of the tribal elders, his family, and Jennifer—it was humiliating and I swore I'd never forgive him."

"Never is a very long time, Cam," he started, but she shook her head.

"I can't, Charlie. He hurt my feelings. It took a long time for me to even think about men again, after…what my Aunt and Uncle did to me…and he was the first one I allowed myself to open up to since the fire. I let my guard down, let him in, and he hurt me, and in some ways it was worse than what Aunt and Uncle did to me because this time I only had myself to blame. And I swore then that I would never ever let anyone in again, and I did pretty good at keeping that promise…until I met you."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back. "I am glad you let me in," he said, then. "And please believe me, Cam…I will never, ever hurt you the way he did. I couldn't."

She smiled back at him, but didn't say a word. She didn't need to. They understood each other.

He volunteered to take Jennifer's groceries to her when they got back. Cam started to put everything away, but he carefully put the bag of spice jars down on the table. "I'll take care of those. Do you have a spice rack?"

"Spice rack?"

He shook his head, grinning. "Never mind. Go ahead and leave those there, I'll take care of them when I get back."

Jennifer knew something had happened the minute she saw his face. "What's wrong?"

"Cam and I ran into Adam at the grocery store in Gowanda this afternoon."

Jennifer made a face. "I knew he hadn't moved that far away but I was hoping she would never have to see him again. How did she react?"

"She tried to stay polite but I could tell it was a strain. I started a conversation just to take her mind off him—anything to ease the tension—and she thanked me afterward."

"He knows where she lives, so if he does show up, please be civil…unless he starts something. Then you can go ahead and wipe the floor with him." She grinned cheerfully. "Cam did lose some face with the tribe because she didn't make sure her advance was welcome before she started courting him, playing her flute outside his family's house, but everyone pretty much agreed that most of the fault was his because everything he was saying and doing led us all to believe that he liked her—and when she started playing outside his house he let it continue instead of stopping her there. I believe he felt that disapproval, that's why he chose to leave our tribe and go live with another clan."

A sudden thought struck Charlie, so sudden that he actually stopped moving for a minute. Jennifer brought him back by waving a hand in front of his face. "Charlie? You there?"

"Um. Yes." He smiled, then to deflect her question about why he was smiling, he asked her, "Cameron doesn't have a spice rack."

She knew it was an evasion, but mercifully for him chose to go along with it. "I've remarked on the lack before. She said 'What's a spice rack'?" She led him to the window. "See that tarp out there? There's a pile of wood under it. It's all just pieces left from some construction and building projects we do around the village. Anything that's left is put out there in the pile of scrap so that it can be used for something else. Very little is ever wasted out here. Mother Earth gives, but it is our responsibility to use wisely." she looked at him. "I'm sure you can find something there to build a spice rack for her. And Andy Lightfeather down at the other end of the village past the general store is the local 'handyman, he has pretty much every tool you might possibly need, nails of all sizes, and he's generous with them so long as you return what's borrowed and replace what's used."

Charlie went out to the woodpile. The kind of spice rack he had in mind would be a simple two-tiered cradle, and Jennifer was right, after digging around in it for a while he found several pieces of wood, actually closer to shims (without the taper) that would be perfect for what he had in mind.

Jennifer smiled as she helped him drag the tarp back over the woodpile and stake it to the ground. "If I see Andy tomorrow I'll let him know you'll be stopping by," she said, and he grinned at her before heading back home.

He felt the atmosphere in the house as he opened the door; sadness, misery, and he dropped the pieces of wood he'd found and headed through the family room to the kitchen. Cam wasn't there, but the cause of her distress was immediately apparent; the trunk lay open on the kitchen floor and there were papers scattered around it; she'd started looking through it, then.

He stared at it for a long moment, wondering if he should just burn all of it, right then, and never let her see it again, but shook his head finally and sighed. As much as he wanted to shield her from everything that might hurt her or distress her, she would object, she would feel stifled and eventually resentful, and it was her choice; he had no right to take that from her. He left the kitchen, headed for the bedroom.

She was a tight, miserable ball huddled under the freshly-aired bedcovers, and he gently sat down on the bed next to her. He didn't pull the blankets back, just sat there and patted the bump where her shoulder was, and waited for her to decide if she wanted to talk to him.

And as he knew she would, she finally poked her head out from under the covers and turned a tear-streaked face toward him. "I took a look at the papers," she said, and although he'd thought she was going to sound angry, instead she just sounded tired and drained. "My Aunt and Uncle…Charlie, they made so much money selling me. So much…I found a little ledger they used, they wrote down partial names, how much each one paid, and what…" She gulped. "They recorded what each person wanted to do to me, what that person paid to be able to do, and they used that as a price list for other…customers. If someone wanted to whip me, they would have to pay x number of dollars…everything they did was itemized and priced and billed just like I was a…a commodity. Charlie, they made millions off me. Some of these people paid my aunt and uncle as much as two thousand dollars apiece, and they paid that four, five, six times. I never paid too much attention to the faces and half the time I was blindfolded and hooded so I never knew, but…these people paid thousands of dollars to hurt me and rape me…" she dissolved into tears again, but this time sat up. He opened his arms to her and she fell into them, and for a while the bedroom was silent except for her sobs.

He waited until her sobs tapered off, then said "Cam, I will burn the stuff if you want me to—"

She pushed off him, wiping her eyes with the corner of the sheet. "No. Please. I was thinking when we go back to base I'll take the ledger, the lists of names, and give them to Olivia. I know the statute of limitations has run out on rape, it's been eight years, but if they did it to me they might have a network of other girls they could do this to and Olivia might be able to track down the names and prosecute them for the next little girl."

It was just like her to think of others first, and Charlie smiled at her even though his heart ached. "I'm sure Olivia will welcome the information, and I'm sure she'll do her best. Do you think you could eat, or are you upset…"

"I could eat." She gave him a watery smile, sniffed back the last of her tears. "Give me a minute and let me get myself together, and I'll see you in the kitchen."

He got to the kitchen while she was in the bathroom washing her face, and busied himself with picking up the papers and stowing them back in the trunk, then shoving the trunk back into the bottom of the kitchen pantry. By the time she came in, the kitchen was tidy, and she made no mention of the trunk or its contents as she crossed to the corner of the kitchen where he'd set down the assorted bits of wood that he'd picked up. "What's this for?"

"I'm going to make you a spice rack." She looked at him, at the little jars of spices he'd lined up neatly against the back of the kitchen counter, and raised an eyebrow.

He dried his hands on a dishtowel as he walked over to her. "Here. See this? This piece goes here, and this one here…" he laid it out on the table as he spoke, showing her to positioning of the framework that would hold the little jars. "Jennifer said Andy Lightfeather has tools and nails and would be willing to lend them, so that's what I'll do tomorrow morning."

"I have to write Jack and Mama Annie and Uncle Art tomorrow, so that's what I'm going to spend the morning doing. We have a lot to catch up on." Good. She'd keep herself occupied then.

Dinner over, they retired to the family room and curled up on the couch, watched a movie on TV. Cam looked tired when it was over, so he coaxed her into getting ready for bed, and while she was in the bathroom he slipped into the bedroom, got his flute from out of the top drawer of his dresser, and slipped outside, settling himself on the ground under the tree outside her bedroom window. When the light went off in the bathroom and went on in the bedroom, he started to play a Navajo melody, simple and sweet, a gentle love song.

He could imagine her inside, first wondering where the music was coming from, then who was playing it, and a smile crossed his face but he kept playing. Moments later the curtain was yanked open, she raised the window sash and looked out, and saw him settled under the tree playing a love song. He saw tears in her eyes then, but not sadness; tears of affection and love, and she leaned out of the window with a catch in her voice and said, "Charlie, it's going to rain. Come on in before you get wet!"

As if on cue, the first fat raindrop hit him, but he refused to come in until he'd finished the song. She met him dripping at the door, laughed at what she called 'his silliness' as she insisted he take his wet clothes off at the front door, then kissed him and they headed for the bedroom, made sweet love before finally falling into blissful, exhausted sleep.


	13. Chapter 4: Lightfeather

**Chapter 4: Lightfeather**

He waited until she was safely engrossed in her letter before he headed out to the house that Jennifer had indicated belonged to Andy Lightfeather. The house was small, not much bigger than Cam's cottage before Jennifer had gotten the tribe to build a new bedroom for her, and his garage/workshop/ tool store was actually almost three times the size of the house. Charlie guessed that Lightfeather spent more time in the shop than he did in the house, and this was proved when Lightfeather himself came around the counter, wiping his hands on an oily rag and smiling genially. "Good morning, young man, and what can I do for you today?"

He was a medium-height with salt-and-pepper hair cut short in the white man's style, but the planes of his face and his nose proclaimed him to be full-blooded Iroquois, and while his name might have been 'Lightfeather' he was actually muscular, compact, and solidly-built. Charlie estimated he was probably in his late fifties to early sixties, and so he addressed the man as he would an elder of the tribe. "I'm Charlie Ironknife, Cam's fellow soldier."

"I'd heard she brought someone home with her but I hadn't met you yet. Nice to meet you." Andy held out a hand, and Charlie shook it in the white man's way. "So what brings you here to my neck of the woods this early in the morning?"

"I need to borrow some tools." Charlie indicated the armful of wood pieces he held. "Cam doesn't have a spice rack and I wanted to build one for her."

"If it's a spice rack you're wanting I have a couple in the store, the womenfolk around here always looking for things like that around the house—" Andy started, but Charlie shook his head.

"I want to build one. A new one, just for her." He wasn't sure if the man would understand but after a minute Andy nodded and his features softened a little.

"Not going to charge you rental for the hammer, but you gotta replace the nails you use."

Charlie nodded. "That seems fair."

"And if you'd like to surprise her with it when you get back, you're welcome to pull that workbench over there under the tree out and set up there."

Charlie grinned. "Thank you, that would be appreciated."

It actually turned out to be a little more complicated than just nailing the pieces of wood together, and he ended up using rather more than just hammer and nails. He sanded the edges of the wood, nailed all of the pieces together, then sanded the sharp corners down and rounded it all off. Next he opened his woodcarving tools and carefully started to carve her name, in strong, bold letters, across the top tier of the spice rack and then his own name across the bottom tier.

It seemed to be a slow day at the shop, so it didn't surprise Charlie that Andy kept coming over casually to see how he was doing, and to offer his advice. He didn't say anything when he saw the first C go up on the face of the top tier, but when it became clear that Charlie was going to put Cam's name on top and his on the bottom, Andy cleared his throat. "Shouldn't you be putting your name on the top?"

"Cam told me that women in the tribe hold higher status. While it is not so with my people, I accept that her customs are different, and if I want to be the husband of a Haudenosaunee medicine woman I must respect her status as higher than mine. Not to mention which, it is her spice rack."

Andy laughed. "Good answer, son. If you need anything other than the little bitty tools you got there, I got some Dremel detail sanding supplies and polishers you're welcome to borrow if you want."

Although it hadn't been his plan, Charlie found himself adding some more decorative touches than he had originally intended. After years in the army, it was pleasant to be sitting out here on a sunny mid-November day engaged in creating something instead of using a gun to shoot things and destroy life. Carved decorative scrollwork grew up the sides of the rack, abstract line designs decorated and highlighted the names carved into the front, and he was just putting the last touches on the carved flourishes across the back of the rack when the sound of a car engine shattered the peace of the morning quiet and a noisy beat-up pickup truck came to a stop in front of Andy Lightfeather's store/garage.

"Hey Mr. Lightfeather," came a familiar voice, and Charlie jerked upright, startled. What was Adam Barefoot doing here?

The boy strode across the small cleared space in front of Andy's shop and stopped in the doorway. "My pickup's making funny noises. Think you could take a look at it for me?"

"Well, now, I don't know, Adam, I'm sorta busy this morning and I don't know as I have enough time to take on another project unless it's a quick one. What seems to be wrong with it?" Charlie knew it to be an excuse; Andy hadn't had a single customer—besides Charlie—all morning. It was immediately apparent to the big Navajo that Andy didn't like Mr. Barefoot.

"Something to do with the timing belt, I think," Adam shrugged. "I'm not much of a car guy so I'm not exactly sure. But you got plenty of time to take a look at it, I heard Cam was back and I was going to go over there and say hi."

"I'd think about that if I were you." Andy's voice took on a slightly sharper edge. "She's still settling in and I don't think you're going to be welcome."

"She'll have time to see me," and the boy's arrogance and casual assurance made Charlie want to grit his teeth. "Ran into her in the grocery store in Gowanda yesterday and we got to talking—"

"No. You did not. She made a point of cutting you out of the conversation." Charlie rose from the workbench where he'd been sitting and approached Andy and Adam; from Adam's startled reaction, he hadn't even known Charlie had been sitting there. Idiot. And since he was so stupid he couldn't take a hint when Cam herself gave it to him, Charlie was going to make sure he got it this time. "She doesn't want to see you. She doesn't want to talk to you. Go away."

"Oh, you're her new boyfriend. The soldier from the Army, right? Hey, I don't know if you know about her, but she has some major issues."

Not as big as the one Adam was about to have if he kept this conversation heading where Charlie thought it was heading. "I know Cam. And I know she doesn't want to see you. So get out of here and forget you know who she is."

"Look, I know you're a brave and you have higher status than me and all that stuff, but Cam's allowed to choose who she wants to be with. And I was the first one she chose."

"And you turned her down. You insulted her in front of her clan sponsor, the tribal elders, and your family. Your actions caused her to lose status." Charlie took a few more steps toward Adam. "So as far as I'm concerned you're the one who lost status, not her. You don't deserve her. You don't even deserve to know her."

"And you do?" Adam was openly mocking. "Have you seen what she looks like under the clothes? She's no great catch for anyone, and her status is only because she's a medicine woman. Under the clothes she's a deformed, ugly—"

Wham! Adam never even saw Charlie's fist move. One minute he was upright, the next minute he was stretched out on the ground, and his jaw throbbed where Charlie's fist had impacted it. He stared up at Charlie, astonished.

"Get out." Charlie's voice was flat, and his fist was clenched and ready. "Get out of this village, get out of my sight, get out of her life. You have no right to bring that up in front of strangers."

"Actually, I'm not a stranger, I'm one of Wolf Clan's elders." Andy's voice cut through the tension. "And seeing as I've known Cam longer than either of you, I'm going to step in here. Adam Barefoot, on my authority as Clan Elder of Wolf Clan, Seneca tribe, you are hereby ordered to leave this village and not return. You are no longer welcome in Wolf Clan's lands. You have not only insulted one of our highest-status medicine women and a warrior in her own right, you have also violated the rules that say courtesy should be offered as guest-right. Mr. Charlie Ironknife is a very high-status medicine man from another tribe and he is here as Seneca's guest. Your discourtesy has brought dishonor not only to you, but to our tribe and our medicine woman, and when Seneca tribe learns of this you will no longer be welcome on Seneca lands. I cannot speak for the rest of the Six Nations but I do not believe that they will have a problem with our viewpoint—nor do I think they would choose to nay-say a vote of banishment and exile if I bring it up in Six Nation council. Think about that very carefully before you next open your mouth." Gone was the quiet, mild-mannered backwoods man Charlie had met that morning; Andy Lightfeather was every inch the clan chieftain as he drew himself up to is full height and braced down the rude young man.

Apparently that got through to Adam Barefoot, because he was distinctly quieter when he got up; all his bluster and fight were gone. "I…think I'll just head on out there, then. Sorry for taking up your time." And he was gone.

Andy blew out his breath, and as quickly as that, the mild-mannered handyman was back. "Thanks for that, young man," he said amiably to Charlie. "I would have said something but she's no relation to me and unless she or someone close to her said something I couldn't kick him out."

"Cam and I ran into him at the Gowanda grocery store yesterday and she made it clear that she didn't want to have anything further to do with him. I didn't like him either."

"And that didn't have anything to do with the fact that you're courting Cam yourself, did it?' Andy said shrewdly, then guffawed when he saw Charlie's nonplussed look. "Come on, young man, you didn't think anyone in the village missed hearing you playing love songs on a courting flute outside her bedroom window last night in the rain, did you?"

"Among my people the flute is not just for courting, but she has told me enough of her customs that I figured that would be an acceptable way of proving that I was serious in my intentions." Charlie grinned sheepishly. "I didn't mean to inconvenience anyone."

"Nope, wasn't no inconvenience at all. Kinda fun seeing someone courting her for a change instead of the other way around. Everybody deserves to feel wanted and loved at some point and she's had precious little of that in her life so far." Andy grinned. "So what tribe are you from, and how do your people court a woman?"

"We call ourselves Dine. The white man calls us Navajo, and my home is in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. I am medicine man and Shaman of my tribe."

"Pretty high status then."

It wasn't a question but Charlie answered it anyway."Yes. Among my people the shaman is second only to the Chief, and in some cases not even that in matters of the spirit."

"So if you marry her you're going to be coming down in status a bit. Does that bother you?" Andy shook his head. "Don't answer that, I'm going to assume that's a no because if it did you wouldn't be courting her. So how does a man of the Dine court a woman ?"

"We are accomplished basketweavers, and we make baskets with different weaving styles to symbolize interest. They are given as a proposal gift, and if it, and the proposal, are accepted we make two matched baskets as wedding gifts."

"And how do you make these baskets? What are they made of?"

Charlie launched into an explanation of the kinds of baskets the Navajo made, what materials were used and how they were woven, all the while wondering a bit at the man's sudden interest. He was about to ask when Andy interrupted him. "I see Cam herself coming up here. Not a word about Adam being here, now, she looks like she's in a good mood and I don't think you want to spoil it for her."

And here was Cam, smiling cheerfully. "Wrote my letter to the Hammonds, and I wrote one to Clayton and Allie and Shana," she said cheerfully as she came up. "The nearest post office box isn't that far down the mountain, so I thought maybe if you were willing, we could skip the drive and take a hike instead?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Andy told her. "The weather's forecasting snow for tomorrow, this is likely going to be the last of this nice weather till spring seeing as how it's already almost Thanksgiving, so taking a walk together through the woods sounds like a nice little treat for the both of you."

Cam grinned. "Playing matchmaker, Chief Andy?" she teased.

"My responsibility is the tribe, and every member in it makes up the tribe. You are a member of the tribe. Therefore you are my responsibility too. And…Jennifer thinks you are alone too much and you would be happier with someone to share your lodge with. I happen to agree with her." He grinned. "All right. Get on with you."

Charlie paused. "Are we just going to go? I wasn't quite finished with…" he gestured to the workbench.

"Go ahead and leave it here, you can pick it up when you get back. It's about one now, by the time you get to the post office down the mountain and back, it'll be dark. And I doubt a Navajo from New Mexico is familiar with New York woods!" Andy grinned cheerily and waved them off.


	14. Chapter 5: Bear

**Chapter 5: Bear**

"He really liked you," Cam said to Charlie as they headed along an almost-invisible trail leading down the side of the mountain. "Chief Andy can be very…intimidating…with people he doesn't like. Until you saw him get angry at someone you almost wouldn't think he was a Chief."

"I can imagine," Charlie said quietly; he agreed with Chief Andy about not telling Cam about the morning's encounter with Adam Barefoot, so he was not about to tell her he'd already seen Chief Andy get angry. It was not, however, something that he was likely to forget.

The trail, while being very distinct to Charlie's tracking-experienced eyes, might not have been noticeable to a lot of people. He pointed that out as they headed down the side of the mountain. Cam explained, "This is our mail trail. Since we don't allow any just anyone on reservation lands, the mailman leaves any mail at a box down at the bottom of the mountain; beside that mailbox is a clear sign for anyone who may happen to be passing through that they just entered Six Nation lands and they should be cautious about what they do while they are here. Our young braves will sometimes patrol the road waiting to jump on anyone who litters or violates one of our rules. That's how we manage to keep our woods relatively trash-free and unspoiled." Now that she mentioned it, he hadn't seen a single cigarette butt, empty soda bottle or discarded plastic bag anywhere; these woods were, for all intents and purposes, pretty much the same way they'd been when the Six Nations reservation had been created who knew how long ago. They apparently took stewardship very seriously and forced others to take it seriously too.

It wasn't a strenuous hike, not by any means; the mountains here were much more mature than the higher, sharper crags of the Rocky Mountains, and there were no deep canyons like in his home state of New Mexico. What there was was plenty of rolling, lush greenery; trees, grass and meadows of wildflowers (mostly gone now with the advent of winter); gentle hills rolling up to the foot of gentle mountains, very lush and peaceful and with a different kind of beauty than his own hometown of Taos Pueblo. And cooler. In New Mexico the day were hot and the nights were cold; here, it didn't seem to get that hot, and the nights were still cold—he could feel a bit of bite to the air now and cuddling up next to Cam by the fireplace in her cottage that evening under that bear fur was going to be next on his agenda.

It was about thirteen hundred when they started out; Charlie checked his watch when they got to the base of the mountain and he saw the blue post office box sitting beside the wide single-lane paved road that led up the mountain. In the middle of all that ancient wilderness, the manmade road and the rusted blue mailbox looked hopelessly ephemeral.

"Kind of gives you a sense of perspective, doesn't it?" Cam said quietly as they trekked the last few yards to the box. "Makes you realize how old the Earth really is and how young Man really is."

He gave her an incredulous look; how did she know that was what he was thinking? But she never saw the look; she'd already opened the hatch on the mailbox and slid the letters inside. "Really, I could have just waited for the mailman to come up to the town and just given it to him to carry back, but I sorta wanted to bring you out here to see the woods."

"I'm not complaining," he said, and he meant it; it had been a nice hike, although the sun was setting now and he could feel the temperature dropping; there was also something different in the air, a sharp bite that had crept into it as they came down the mountain.

She took a deep sniff of the air. "I think Chief Andy was right, it smells like snow," she said, and pursed her lips and blew. As if to prove her point, a misty white cloud hung before her for a minute before it dissipated; the air was cooling rapidly.

"We're going to have snow tonight. And it's going to be a nice-sized storm. Come on, let's hurry back; we both dressed for cold but a sudden November snowstorm up here isn't something to play around with."

Going up was considerably harder than coming down, and Charlie at first hardly realized just how cold it was getting; he was getting a workout climbing up over the hills and rocks they had breezed down barely an hour and a half before. It was getting darker with what he deemed was almost mind-boggling rapidity; when he checked his watch and found it was only seventeen hundred he asked Cam, "Does it usually get this dark at five in the afternoon?"

"It starts getting dark but it doesn't get this dark unless a storm's coming. Hang in there, we're going to have to pick up the pace so we don't get caught out." It was getting harder and harder to see the trail under his feet; Charlie gave up the effort and focused on watching Cam instead; her buff colored jacket stood out in the gathering darkness. "Watch your footing, Charlie, the trail gets a little rough here."

He remembered the broken part of the trail from when they had come down; it looked like there had been some sort of rockfall that had taken part of the trail and left loose rock and shale behind. He was concentrating on carefully picking his way around a large boulder when he heard a growl.

He froze, looked up.

And up.

On the hillside above them was a bear.

"Great Spirit, I didn't know they were that big!" The exclamation slipped out before he could stop himself.

Cam edged backward till she stood beside him. "Don't make any sudden moves," she said softly, never taking her eyes off the bear. "They should all be hibernating by now, he shouldn't still be out this late into November unless there's something wrong with him. I think he's sick, and that makes him unpredictable. Back away. Slowly."

Charlie backed up. Took a step. Two. Three. The bear watched them, didn't make a move. Four.

At five, disaster struck.

A loose bit of rock and earth shifted under his foot, and he lost his balance. His yell of startlement as his foot went out from under him, as he fell backward down the slope, seemed to galvanize the bear, and for what felt like an eternity, Charlie's world turned into a dizzying panorama of roaring bear when he was right side up and speeding hillside when he was upside down. He heard Cam scream, high-pitched and shrill, but she seemed a long way off. He seemed to be falling faster than the bear, though; moments later there was a burning pain on his left leg, and then with startling suddenness he hurtled down a small cliff-like rock formation and hit the ground.

And the world stopped rolling.

He lifted his head out of the leaves and sticks and forest detritus that seemed to have collected at the bottom of this mini-cliff; on the cliff above him he heard a roar, but it was, to his dizzy mind, a somewhat disappointed-sounding roar, as if the bear realized his dinner had escaped him. Charlie laid his head down on the pile of leaves as a relieved laugh escaped him.

"Charlie!" came a cry, and he looked up, to see Cam now occupying the space on the clifftop that the bear had occupied a scant few minutes before. "Charlie, are you all right?"

"I've been better," he said, and moments later she was beside him, looking worried.

"You hit the ground kind of hard there. Are you sure you're okay?" And then she sucked in a breath. "Charlie…"

He followed her shocked gaze, and found his eyes trying to focus on his mangled, bloody left leg. "Oh. Wondered what that was," he said fuzzily.

Cam rolled him over on his back. "Stretch yourself out and lie flat," she said, her voice flat. "Stay focused on breathing, okay?'

He followed her instructions until he was lying flat on his back and she was carefully pulling the shreds of his jeans away from his left thigh. "The bear grazed your thigh with his claws," she said grimly. "Charlie, I have to check and see if it's broken—this is going to hurt, okay?"

"Okay," he said, and clenched his teeth on the cry that threatened to escape him as he felt her hand travel down the outside of his thigh, from the hardness of hip bone down his leg until she reached his knee. When she finally took her hand away he realized he was panting as if he'd run a mile and was dripping sweat despite the chill in the air.

"Your leg isn't broken but you've been mauled. Charlie, normally I'd try to go get help but this storm is closing fast and I don't know if I'd be able to find you again in the dark—"

"I think….I can walk…"

"Wait, wait, don't move yet…" And to his complete surprise, Cam stripped off her jacket, took off her shirt, then put her jacket back on over her bra and zipped it up. "Let me at least try to stop the bleeding from your leg. I'm going to tie my shirt around your thigh, and it's going to hurt, so brace yourself."

He did his best, but as she tightened the knots of her sleeves around his upper thigh he howled with the pain. She winced but said, "I'm sorry, Charlie, I know it hurts but I had to."

"I…know…" He ground out through gritted teeth as she came to him and knelt over him.

"All right. I want you to wrap your arms around my neck. Try not to move that injured leg, the more you move it the more blood you'll lose and we're definitely not going to get home if you pass out on me from blood loss. I'll stand, pulling you up with me, and we should be able to get you upright. Then you can lean on me, or I can find you a stick, and we can get home. We're actually not all that far, maybe a mile or so, and in another half mile the terrain levels a bit and it won't be as steep." She knelt, looking at him. "Now tell me honestly, Charlie, if you don't think you'll be able to make it, and I'll just make camp right here and we'll wait it out. If we didn't have this snowstorm coming, I wouldn't have a problem but I am a bit concerned, which is why I'm asking."

"I can make it…just get me up." And after a couple of tries, during which he really tried not to move his leg at all, they succeeded in getting him upright.

The first half-mile was hell; the uneven terrain made it hard to keep his leg completely still, and he knew she saw the spreading red stain on the light blue shirt she had tied around his leg but he shook his head. "Can't be helped, Cam," and she nodded in understanding even as she edged further under his arm and increased the amount of weight she was supporting. He would have protested but he didn't have the strength, or the energy; he was feeling lightheaded and dizzy from blood loss and incipient shock and they both knew, from their Army training, that they needed to get him off his feet, fast.

Charlie would never afterward remember how they'd gotten home. Full dark had set, and he could barely see the ground beneath his feet, much less discern any landmarks on the way that would indicate where they were or how close they were. He quietly thanked the Great Spirit that Cam was familiar with these woods and knew where they were going, and that she was such a good navigator; his skills were tracking, not navigation, and he was completely out of his depth here. Despite having her there to help him, support a lot of his weight and take the stress off his leg, he was stumbling and near collapse when the ground under his feet suddenly evened out and he felt the packed dirt of the village's common areas under his boots. Almost at the same time Cam called out, "Jennifer! Andy!"

There was a confused hubbub of voices and sound around him, flashlights in his eyes, and suddenly something hit the back of his legs and a voice, Jennifer's he identified, said "Sit down and we'll get you to Cam's." He sat, realizing rather belatedly that it was a wheel chair and they were pushing the chair through the village until they got to Cam's door.

With more hands willing to take the weight, he barely even had to walk. He closed his eyes, allowing weariness to take him, and when he next opened them, he was stretched out on Cam's bed, with her voice and a confused babble of other voices around him, and then a hand touched his leg, untied the blood-stained shirt tied around his thigh, and the pain finally brought blessed darkness behind it.


	15. Chapter 6: Medicine Woman

**Chapter 6: Medicine Woman**

He woke to weak sunlight filtering in from the window behind the head of the bed; he was warm, comfortable, and at the moment, disinclined to move. He felt like he was floating, like he was weightless and laying on a cloud; the only thing he could feel was a small hand in his, a small, warm palm wrapped around his fingers, and when he finally decided opening his eyes and looking at the owner of that hand was important, he discovered Cam sitting in a chair beside his bed, slumped over with her head resting on the edge and her hands wrapped around his.

She was a light sleeper—well, he'd already known that, he'd slept next to her every night for nearly a week now, and the week before they'd gone to the Fort Wadsworth base for the court martial—so she woke as soon as she felt him move. A blink, and her eyes focused on him, and the smile she gave him was a relieved, if tired, smile. "Hey," she said quietly. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm floating," he said, and he meant it.

"Well, all things considered, you have a right to be. We dosed you pretty heavily with willow bark and mullein and Percocet. Don't move your leg because there's a poultice of yarrow and calendula on it—plus you're getting a healthy dose of antibiotics to make sure that doesn't get infected. Speaking of which, it's time to change that dressing."

He watched her putter around on the other side of the room; the dressers had been cleared and there was what looked like a dozen jars and bottles of herbs and pastes. Not that that was surprising, seeing as she was a medicine woman, but… "What's all that?" he asked lazily.

She flashed a smile at him over her shoulder as she grabbed sheets of gauze. "Everything I've been using on you for the last three days," she said.

"Three days!" He almost sat straight up in bed, but even as he hit the halfway point the room spun, and he decided that staying down would be a better idea; his stomach roiled and he swallowed hard. After three days he wasn't sure what would come up if he vomited, but he was equally sure he didn't want to find out. "I've been out for three days?"

She paused for a moment, staring into thin air as she thought. "Well, we got back on Tuesday night, and it's now early Friday morning, so, okay, it's been about two days and a few hours."

"I've been out that long?"

"Well, by yourself you might not have, but Jennifer said men make lousy patients so we decided to keep you sedated until the edges of those gashes had at least started to knit a little. We don't usually get cases as bad as this, you know that the role of medicine women—and men—are largely more ceremonial than medicinal lately, thanks to advancements in the white man's hospitals, but with the snow keeping us from going anywhere, we were forced to kind of…make do."She gave him a crooked smile. "And it wasn't the worst Jennifer has seen—as she's reminded me every time I started to complain that we really should get you to a regular hospital."

"What happened?" His memories of Tuesday evening were a little fuzzy. "The bear swiped me with a claw as I was going over, that much I remember. I remember you saying we had to get home because there was a snowstorm coming. I don't remember much after that."

"Well, we did get home. You were bleeding pretty badly by the time we got here, and I called Jennifer and Chief Andy and between us we got you home. The bear's claws gave you four parallel gashes on the outside of your thigh there, but even though they bled profusely there was surprisingly little soft tissue damage underneath and absolutely no muscle damage. Jennifer said you would be child's play after having nursed me through first and second degree burns with only natural remedies—she didn't start keeping a supply of modern medicines like painkillers and antibiotics until after I came, but I'm glad we had at least that." She came to the head of the bed. "All right. If you want to sit up I'll help so you can see what your leg looks like. I want to get some food in you while you're up, too; after two days you have to be hungry and pain medication on an empty stomach can make you nauseous."

He was starving. "All right." Thanks to the painkillers, his leg only twinged as she shifted pillows around on the bed until he sat fully supported against the headboard. "All right. Ready?" She peeled away the gauze dressing from the wound.

He had braced himself for seeing nasty, red, swollen flesh, ugly and infected, but to his complete surprise the four gashes were neatly stitched, there was no sign of redness or infection, and the edges of the gashes were already starting to knit under the connecting sutures. "Wow." He was impressed. "Jennifer did a really good job."

"Are you kidding? You think I'd let any other woman anywhere close to you if it was something I could do? That's my handiwork you're seeing. Jennifer directed me, told me what to do and how to do it, but I did the work." Cam sounded offended that he would have thought someone other than she would have stitched him up.

He hastened to soothe her. "You did an impressive Job. Just as good as Doc or Lifeline would have done." And he was being truthful; he'd seen samples of Doc's stitchery and this was just as good as any the Joes' doctor had done, maybe better.

"You were unconscious for the stitching up so you never felt it, but I swear to you you'll feel the removal!" she laughed at him as she packed a new paste around the wound and taped the gauze on top of it. "Now how does some broth and bread sound?"

"As edible as the table leg." He was starving.

Cam laughed at him again, and he reflected that although he knew it was giddy relief that he was all right, it was still nice to hear her laugh. "Sorry. You don't get anything but that for the first meal. Jennifer said you should eat bland, light foods—you haven't eaten anything for two days and you're also bound to be lightheaded and dizzy from the painkillers, so you have to eat that—and keep it down—before you get anything else." Without waiting for him to answer, she left the bedroom.

"Well, I guess if there isn't anything else on the menu—it can't be as bad as Clayton's cooking."

She was already halfway to the kitchen, but the sound of her laughter carried back down the short hall, through her studio, and into the bedroom. Ten minutes later she came back into the room, carrying a large wooden tray with a loaf of what looked like homemade fresh bread on it, cut into soft, warm, generously-thick slices, and two large soup bowls of broth. He was resigned to blandness, but to his surprise the broth was thickened with rice and sprinkled with slivers of what looked like—beef? "Is that…beef?"

"I shaved a little off the venison and added it to the broth. I know Jennifer said bland but I figured you could handle a little lean meat." He gave her a kiss as she arranged the tray on his lap.

"You said it can't be as bad as Clayton's cooking—you're serious?" She was giggling as she climbed into the bed next to him, taking the second bowl of broth from the tray.

Instead of answering he took a closer look at her. Yes, she did look tired. "You've been up the last three days, haven't you."

"I had to watch the wound and make sure it didn't get infected." Cam busied herself with her bowl, not meeting his eyes.

"Did you get any sleep?" he growled at her.

She blinked at him slightly sheepishly. "Um. A little. On the folding cot out in my studio."

"Well, now that I'm awake and out of the woods, you are definitely going to get some sleep tonight," he said firmly, and she ducked her head at his tone and busied herself with her bowl.

Despite his disdain for the light, bland fare, it did help settle his stomach as something heavier might not have, helped along by the slices of bread. "I thought you couldn't cook," he said as he bit into the first slice of warm, soft bread.

She rolled her eyes. "I can't. This is Jennifer's doing. She said that if I was going to stay up and take care of you, then she was going to take care of me." Her grumpy tone made him laugh.

"She's just worried about you, sweetheart," he pointed out reasonably. "From what I've seen she kind of looks at you like another daughter. Her own live in the cities with white man's jobs and don't have any interest in their Iroquois heritage, so she kind of looks at you like a surrogate daughter and protégé all in one. Humor her and let her fuss over you, okay?"

As if their conversation had conjured her up, they heard the front door open and a moment later Jennifer's cheery voice said, "Cam? You up?"

"We're up," Charlie called.

Moments later she walked into their bedroom and eyed both of them with some amusement. "Well, don't we look cozy."

Cam blushed. Charlie grinned. Jenifer grinned at him back and said, "Cam, did you change the dressing?"

"Of course I did. It looks clean, no sign of infection." Cam slid out of bed and pulled the gauze and dressing back from the leg wound.

Jennifer examined it, probing the wound and the area around it carefully. Her face finally cracked in a smile and she said, "You've done well."

"Thanks." Cam almost glowed.

"Leave this dressing on for the next six hours, then take it off and leave it off. Let the wound air out. Charlie, you can get up and walk for short periods tomorrow, but take it easy for the rest of the weekend. The edges of the wound are already beginning to knit but I want to wait until next week to take the stitches out."

"I can get up tomorrow?" Charlie asked her.

"Yes, you can get up tomorrow. Don't tell me you're going to start complaining like every other man we've ever had for a patent." Jennifer grinned wickedly. "Cam, if he starts complaining you can put him back to sleep—

"No, no, no, I'm not complaining," Charlie said hastily, at which Jennifer's smile got wider and Cam hid a grin behind her hand. "I'm just…" He paused. How was he to explain that he really needed to go to the bathroom? The broth he'd just eaten seemed to have run right through him. "Uh, I need to…" he gestured helplessly.

Cam grinned. "It's okay, Charlie, remember, Jennifer and I are both medicine women. We've seen and done it all." She reached for a urinal that was sitting on the bedside table, and he protested.

"I can do this myself."

"Charlie, over the last three days I've done this for you many, many times. I know how this works, Charlie, Lord and Lady bless, I've handled enough men in my life."

"I can do this." Charlie set his lips stubbornly and clutched the covers around his waist.

She looked at him, and he saw confusion in her eyes. "Charlie…"

"Cam. Can you take the trays and dishes to the kitchen." Jennifer's tone of voice indicated it wasn't a request. Cam took the hint, and Jennifer closed the bedroom door behind her.

"Now. Let's clear the air here. Do you have a problem with Cam as your nurse?"

"No! No, I don't, she did an excellent job with my leg."

"You can't tell me that your objections to this are about her seeing you naked because I know you've seen her naked before. Many times, in fact." She saw his blush and grinned slightly. "You both are very enthusiastic and sometimes the sounds of the revelry leak out."

He'd heard the phrase 'die of mortification'. He'd never thought it would apply to hm.

Jennifer grinned again at his discomfort, then got serious. "It's not Cam seeing you naked that's the problem, it's the personal services that's the problem."

He nodded. "She…she spent three years locked in a basement performing 'personal services' for the people who came to hurt her. I can't force her to do that for me—I don't even allow her to…um…use her mouth…because every time I think about it, I think about her tied up in that basement and forced to..to perform oral services…and it makes me sick. I know she doesn't understand why I don't let her but I just…can't shake the image."

Jennifer folded her arms. "Charlie, I will say that I understand but pushing her away when she tries isn't helping any. She spent three years locked in a basement perfecting those oral skills so that she could avoid having more men between her legs that she didn't want there. Now, for the first time, she has a man that she loves, and who loves her back, and she wants to use everything she has and everything she is to make you happy. Her need to do things for you stems from her insecurity, and when you 'reject' something she's offering to do, or something she wants to do, you're feeding that self-doubt. She wants to satisfy you, make you happy but when you reject something she's offering she sees it as you rejecting her and it confuses and makes her uncertain."

"What do I do?" Charlie shrugged helplessly.

"Talk to her. Tell her how you feel. Explain to her that you're not comfortable with it; she'll accept that. But at the same time I also want you to remember something; she learned how to please those pedophiles she hated because she had to, but now she wants to use those skills to please someone she loves. It's a validation, of sorts; being able to please you, to her is worth the three years she spent locked in a basement learning those skills."

Charlie couldn't think of a single thing to say. He'd never seen it before. Cam offered, but he'd refused, repeatedly; he hadn't seen it as her desperate need to assure herself that her three years in that basement had been worth something, that something good could come out of something so horrible.

"Think about it," Jennifer said, and reached for the bedroom doorknob, only to have it pulled from her hand as Cam yanked it open from the other side.

She was pissed. Charlie had never seen her so angry before. "Jennifer. I'll thank you to stay out of my business."


	16. Chapter 7: Respect

**Chapter 7: Respect**

**Author's Note: This chapter probably seems very short in comparison with the rest, but that because certain parts have been cut out due to ratings compliance. If you'd like to read the whole thing, please send an email to jaenelleangelline79 . Enjoy!**

Jennifer took a step back; from the startled look on her face, this wasn't a reaction she'd been expecting. "Cam…"

"Don't, Jennifer. I know you mean well, but I'm a grown woman and I can take care of my own business. I don't need you to mother-hen me anymore. I'm not the vulnerable, naïve little teenager I was when you met me. Not anymore. Charlie is my man and this is my problem. I'll handle things my own way."

Jennifer said stiffly, "My apologies, Cameron. I was too forward. I will respect your privacy from now on."

"Do that." Cam stepped out of the way; a clear dismissal. Jennifer stepped around her and disappeared.

Silence reigned in the bedroom for a moment before Charlie broke it. As interesting as that little exchange between Cam and Jennifer had been, there was something requiring his attention, rather urgently. "Um. I still have to go to the bathroom."

"You don't want me helping you. So go ahead and get up and go to the bathroom." Cam snapped, not looking at him, then blew out her breath and relented. "All right. I don't want you to put any weight on that leg. I'll help."

Every step increased his urgent need to relieve himself; as soon as he saw the bathroom door open he left the security of her arms, reached for the doorframe, and hopped one-legged into the bathroom just to get there faster. Cam closed the door behind him as he pulled down his boxers and relieved himself, then he hopped to the door; Cam was waiting for him, and they got back to the bedroom without further incident. Charlie didn't speak again until he was lying back in bed and Cam was tucking blankets and sheets around him, smoothing the rumpled bed. Then, "Sweetheart, Jennifer was only trying to help."

"I know." Her hands never stopped moving and she never met his eyes.

"You shouldn't have gotten so mad at her."

"I'm not mad at just her. I'm mad at you too."

He blinked. "At me? What did I do?"

"Charlie." She slapped the bedspread in exasperation. "If you have a problem with me and something I'm offering to do for you in the bedroom, don't air it out all over my village! Lord and Lady, that's what hurt so much, you didn't even feel that you could talk to me about it, but you could talk to Jennifer!"

He said the only thing he could think of. "She asked."

Cam put her hands on her hips and stared at him, her eyes snapping sparks. "And if Frank asks about our sex life, are you going to talk about it with him?"

"No!" He shook his head emphatically. He and Frank were close friends, but this… "No. I'm not."

"Then why are you talking about it with Jennifer?" And now he detected a hurt note in her voice. "Why didn't you tell me if you have a problem?"

Now he understood. It wasn't the talk with Jennifer that she minded, it was the fact that he hadn't talked to her first. With the new insight he'd gained from his talk with Jennifer, he understood that by not telling her, he'd somehow fed into her insecurities. "Cam, I didn't tell you because I didn't want to hurt your feelings. I didn't even want to bring it up because every time I think about you crying and terrified, I want to go hunt the people who hurt you and shoot them, and I don't want you to think I'm angry with you."

Her eyes filled with tears and she said quietly, "Charlie, when you have a problem with Shana and Allie, if you're off-duty and they technically aren't your superiors at the time you'll talk back to them and tell them you have a problem. But you've never, ever done that with me, even though we're supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend and we're supposed to be able to talk to each other. You treat me differently from them because when you look at me, you don't see me, a grown woman, you're still seeing me as a scared teenager. When am I going to be a woman to you, Charlie? When am I going to have the respect that you give everyone but me?"

"Oh Jesus, Cam." He hadn't known she would look at it like that, hadn't known that his 'coddling' her was that obvious. "I didn't even think. Cam, it's not that I don't see you as a woman, I…I see you still hurting over what happened to you, and I want to avoid making that hurt worse, I love you so much I want to protect you from everything, from all of it. So I don't talk to you."

Her eyes softened at his words and she straddled his knees as he sat propped up on pillows in the bed. "Charlie. Please, for my sake, if there's something I'm doing that bothers you, please tell me. Let me decide if I want to be protected. I have been through so much, don't you think I deserve the right to make my own choices?"

"Yes. Yes, you do," he said firmly. "You have and I've been an ass. Forgive me?"

"Of course. I never could stay mad at you." She leaned in to kiss him. The kiss deepened, lengthened, and all thoughts of his leg faded in the incredible sensation of her lips against his, the gentle caress of soft hair brushing his cheek.

He hesitated, but with Jennifer's warning about validating her experiences by letting her do what she wanted ringing in his ears, he finally decided what the hell. So instead of saying anything, he just slid down in the bed to give her better access to him and lay back.

It was a good five minutes later that he finally found his voice. "Wow."

She grinned, but there was a hint of—uncertainty?—in her eyes. "Good?"

"Jesus. You have no idea how that feels for a guy."

"Probably as good as it feels for a girl—as good as it feels for me when you tease me." Uncertainty was gone, replaced by happiness.

"Cam, I'm serious…I've never felt like that." He looked at her, noting how she seemed to suddenly be…happier? And she'd enjoyed it. "Cam…did you like this?"

"Yes," she said, and the smile she gave him was unfeigned. "Yes, I did. Charlie…it's different with you than it was with…the others. With them I just focused on getting it over with as fast as possible, but for you I really do want to make it feel good." She ducked her head, suddenly shy. "Listening to you lose control like that because of something I'm doing…I loved hearing you howl my name like that. No one ever has before."

So Jennifer had been right, Cam had wanted to know that something good—being able to please him—could come from something so bad. And that was what prompted him to finally say, "Anytime you want to do that again is fine with me." He grinned at her, sitting at the end of the bed.

It was only later when they were both lying flat on the bed and she was stretched out next to him fast asleep that he thought through the events of the evening. The argument with Jennifer, her confession to him, her decision to show him the toy she'd been hiding from him…had she felt that he might not accept that she had it? He felt as though they'd passed some important milestone in their relationship, that something had been holding her back from letting him in on all of her secrets, No, she really didn't need Jennifer to mother-hen her anymore; she was now completely healed from her experiences, mentally and emotionally, and she embraced her feelings now instead of being afraid of them. He smiled and snuggled her closer to him. "Good night, Cam," he said.


	17. Chapter 8: Basement

**Chapter 8: Basement**

After a week of lying in bed indoors, it was good to be out and about again, albeit with a homemade (though still effective) splint. There was a layer of snow on the ground, but the path from Cam's door through the village was shoveled out and even, so trudging through the snow wasn't as much of a chore as it would have been otherwise.

Cam strolled along the path at an easy pace suitable to his injured leg, but there was a purposeful direction to her walk, and he understood when they came to a stop at the path that led to Jennifer's door. He didn't know what Cam was going to want to say to Jennifer but he was equally sure he really didn't want to know. "Hey sweetheart," he said tentatively, "I was in the middle of making you a spice rack that afternoon before we set out to drop off that mail and I left it at Andy's. I'm going to go stop over there and pick it up, okay?"

She nodded, her quick smile showing she understood. "Don't worry, I'm not going to get in another catfight. I just don't want Jennifer to think I'm still mad at her…and I want to make sure she's not mad at me. We don't allow those sorts of tensions to go unresolved in the village." Which made sense to Charlie, so he gave her a quick kiss goodbye and shuffled off to Andy Lightfeather's.

"Hey. Been wonderin' when you were going to be coming by for that spice rack you were working so hard on." Andy greeted him genially.

"Is it still here?"

"Oh, of course. Wouldn't'a dared do anything with it seein' as who it's for." Andy gestured to the counter behind him, where the spice rack sat. "Looks like you're about done with it."

"Just some light sanding left, that's it." Charlie took it down, ran a hand over the fine grain of the wood.

Andy cleared his throat. "Well, I left it sittin' back there figurin' you'd come get it when you could, but while it's been sittin' there I've had a lot of womenfolk ask me about it. I've never been one for fancy carving, but quite a few of the women here think it's something they want in their kitchens, so perhaps I'll be sending them along to you if they want one? You're welcome to use my shop and my tools if you like."

Charlie grinned. "Sure. Sounds great. Go ahead and let them know, and while they come to me to ask about it, they can get to know Cam at the same time—she's too isolated and it would do her some good to hang around with other women and do…whatever it is women do when they're together."

Andy grinned. "Thought you'd see it that way. Hey, can you come in the back here for a bit? There's something I want to ask you about…" Slightly mystified, Charlie followed Andy into the back of the shop, into the large workspace area.

And there, sitting in large bags of clear thick plastic on the floor, were bundles of coiled reed suitable for baskets. Charlie knew immediately what it was, and he turned to look at Andy in astonishment.

Andy grinned. "While we're makin' sure you're respecting our customs, we should also respect yours. And if your customs say that making baskets is your way of courting, I figured I should try and accommodate that. Is all of this enough?"

Charlie found his voice. "I think I could get a basket or three out of all this. This is…generous. How do I repay you?"

Andy waved a hand dismissively. "You just make sure you make Cam happy. That's all I'm asking."

"She will be as happy as it is possible for a human being to be," Charlie said fervently. "Not because of the baskets, but because I love her and I want to be her husband."

"That's the spirit—" he broke off as they heard Jennifer's voice from the shop outside.

"Andy?"

And Cam's voice. "Charlie?"

"We're here," and both men exited the back room hastily, Andy closing the door so Cam wouldn't see what was back there.

The two women seemed to have made up; they were hand-in-hand with each other, although both were serious. "It's okay, I promised not to mother-hen Cam anymore and she thanked me for interfering, since it cleared up some misunderstanding between the two of you. But she asked to see the site of the burned cabin."

Andy went still. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked Cam seriously, and the geniality in his voice was gone. "It is going to be upsetting and distressing for you and I would not recommend it."

"This is something I have to do, Chief Lightfeather," Cam said formally. "If I want to move forward, I have to come to grips with my past."

He sighed. "Can't argue with that, I guess. I'm assuming you're telling me this because you want to borrow the wagon?" he gestured to the beat-up, ancient Buick station wagon sitting outside his shop. "It's got a bit more room in it than that Jeep young Charlie here has, and better than Jennifer's VW bug," and Cam's lips curved in a tiny smile.

"That was the intent, yes," Jennifer said, grinning at Andy, and at that point Charlie realized that Jennifer and Andy, while not 'married', were certainly a lot closer than just chief and medicine woman. The thought made him blush and he turned his attention to Cam. "I'm game if you are," he said.

Despite what the station wagon looked like on the outside, it started up without complaint and hummed smoothly down the mountainside until they got to a weed-choked, badly-overgrown turnoff from the main road down to the highway at the base of the mountain. Although they could still tell there was asphalt paving under the weeds and grass, it was clear that the road hadn't been used in years.

Andy finally stopped the car just as the front tires hit dirt, and beckoned out the windshield with one hand. "See that pile of rocks and the tangle of half-burned timber? That's where the cabin used to be."

Cam got out slowly, face pale. Charlie followed a few steps behind, wanting to give her space but also ready to catch her if she fainted, which she seemed likely to do.

She circled around the pile of debris; partially-burned, charred timbers, the barest skeleton frame of a small cabin. "The front door was here," she said quietly, her voice somehow distant and faraway as she stepped over a timber lying on the ground. She followed a slightly circular path around the skeleton of the house, stopping finally at a place where the floor had obviously collapsed; there was a higher pile of snapped wood planks and beams than there were on other areas of what used to be the 'first floor'.

Almost as if in a trance she started to push aside a pile of rocks and rubble; not wanting her to hurt her hands, Charlie hurried over to help her, and Andy and Jennifer joined them moments later. Between the four of them, they got the rocks moved from over top of what at first looked like weathered wood, but when Charlie had to help Cam lift the trapdoor he discovered a solid slab of rusted metal overlaid with wooden boards; camouflage, no doubt, to hide the basement's existence from any visitors who might have come by and not known about its inhabitants' nasty little secret.

The metal trapdoor disclosed a set of concrete steps leading downward, and Cam led the way, followed by Charlie and Jennifer; Andy remained aboveground. At the foot of the steps was another heavy door, this one metal, again, with a heavy panel of wood over it also. He didn't understand the purpose of the wood until Cam gave a faint smile at his puzzled look and said, "Sound dampening. If they happened to have a regular visitor come by at the same time a customer was down here with me, they didn't want the visitor hearing me screaming, right?" The smile disappeared.

He caught her arm as she reached for the door. "Cam. You don't have to do this. You don't have to come back here. There's nothing here for you anymore. It's over, you survived it, and that's all that matters."

She looked at him and he was staggered by the look in her eyes, haunted, full of pain. "Charlie—yes I do. I want to stop waking up with nightmares, Charlie, I want to stop thinking about it. I want to make my peace with it. Maybe this will help." She swung the door open.

They stood back as a draft of musty air escaped the partially-open door. There had to still be some air coming and going in and out of it, because the air didn't smell musty, it just—smelled like a basement. Charlie followed Cam in cautiously, the late-afternoon sunshine streaming in from the door down the concrete steps providing enough light for him to see by.

The room was maybe about twelve feet square, with a seven-foot ceiling. There was no mirror along the far wall, but there was a wooden barre, moldy and rotting. In the opposite corner was a rusted metal cot, bolted down to the floor, and the headboard and footboard had leather straps with heavy, rusted, tarnished buckles. Charlie shuddered as he thought of a fifteen year old Cam strapped to that bed, crying as some nameless, faceless man raped her, and he wanted to throw up. He swallowed the urge down with difficulty, but the next moment had to fight it again as she opened the doors to what at first looked like a closet but what, when she swung the door open, was a bathroom. A toilet sat at one end, the porcelain cracked and grimy; there was no flushing handle and the smell that came up from it reminded him of an old sewer. The other end of the closet had a showerhead sticking out of the wall, and there was a drain set in the middle of the floor.

He stared at it for long moment, trying to process it. He'd never seen anything so disgusting, so filthy; the thought of Cam living in this room for three years, going to the bathroom and showering in this closet, sleeping on the same bed that countless dirty men raped her on; he couldn't imagine how she'd survived it, how she'd managed to hang onto her sanity in the middle of this relentless cruelty and callous brutality.

He was still trying to absorb the image when she opened a 'closet' door in the third wall, and his mind again stumbled to a halt as he tried to process what was in this closet. It looked like something that should have belonged in a museum dedicated to the Spanish Inquisition; his mind identified some of the things hanging from nails set into the cement, but there were many, many things he didn't have names for; chains and leather seemed to be the basic theme here and he didn't want to know how some of those things could be used on a helpless human body.

"Cam." His voice broke on her name, and she turned to look at him, her face smooth and expressionless as it was when she was hiding strong emotions. "Cam, sweetheart, please…"

It was as much a plea for comfort for his sake as it was for hers; he could tell that seeing this place, those things, was hurting her as much as it hurt him, and he wordlessly opened his arms. She took two steps over to him, buried her face in his chest, and started to cry, deep, harsh, racking sobs that shook her whole body, as if the tears she'd held back for the three years she'd lived in this hellhole were all coming out now. He held her as she shook and cried, and didn't even realize he was crying too.

The room was getting dark by the time they ran out of tears and were physically and mentally exhausted. It was Cam who looked up first, sniffling away the last of her tears, and said with a trace of a smile in her voice, "Jennifer and Andy probably want to get home. We should get going, the sun's going to be down any minute." She looked down and remorse tinged her voice. "And I've been keeping you standing on that leg—"

"It's okay, I hardly even felt it," he hastened to assure her, and it was true. He'd been so wrapped up in the emotional turmoil that he'd hardly even noticed his leg.

"We should still get you off it," she said firmly, and they headed back up the concrete steps. Jennifer and Andy met them at the top of it, and their silent understanding almost made Charlie want to cry again; they were quietly and gently supportive.

Andy turned the headlights on the Buick and together the four of them heaped the rocks and debris back over the trapdoor. "Leave it there," Cam said when they finished, sounding tired but oddly at peace. "I don't need to come back again. It's over."

Thank God for that because Charlie was absolutely sure coming back here would kill him.

They were covered in dust and dirt when they got back, and Cam insisted that Charlie get in the shower so she could clean his leg and make sure dirt hadn't gotten under the stitches. The sheer sensual pleasure as she wiped his sweaty skin down with a soapy washcloth inspired him to do the same, and they ended the day by giving each other a warm shower, simply enjoying being together. He didn't have much of a desire for sex, and he was sure she didn't either, and so she leaned against his chest as he ran hands through her hair, shampooing and rinsing it gently, then they both headed for the bed, curling up next to each other before finally falling into a deep, exhausted sleep.


	18. Chapter 9: Visit

**Chapter 9: Visit**

"Are you sure they're going to like it here?" Cam looked anxiously around the room that had once been her studio.

Charlie kissed the top of her head. "They'll love it here, sweetheart." And you, but he didn't say it out loud.

'They' were Charlie's parents, Jimmy and Myra Ironknife; he'd sent them two plane tickets to the Buffalo airport and promised to meet them there; the flight was supposed to arrive that afternoon. With Thanksgiving tomorrow and a foot of snow expected to be on the ground that evening, it was shaping up to be a cozy thanksgiving.

Not that he didn't have an ulterior motive in mind; with Dad and Mom up here, the clan negotiations surrounding his and Cam's marriage could be taken care of, and he would be able to present her with the courting basket (and, eventually the two wedding baskets) he'd been working on in the back of Andy Lightfeather's shop for the last week. Cam had been out and about, helping the rest of the village 'winterize' their homes one by one, but with his leg still healing, he'd been firmly forbidden from participating, although he suspected that in Jennifer's case the stubbornness was a front to give him an excuse to send him to Andy Lightfeather's shop. True to his word, the full-time handyman, part-time Chief had indeed spread the word in the village about the source of the fancy carved spice rack, and whenever Charlie got bored with basket-making there was yet another woodcraft project waiting for his 'creative touch'. He was earning quite a bit doing the fancy woodworking; and although Andy insisted he didn't want payment, Charlie made sure that some of those earnings made their way into Andy's cashbox. He was equally sure that Andy knew.

The baskets were drying in Andy's tool shed after a coating of special resin that would make them waterproof; they should be done by the time his mother and father got done with Jennifer. Now he was off to the airport to pick them up; the small studio had been transformed into a guest bedroom for their use for the four days they would be here—Thanksgiving, and the weekend, and Charlie had bought them return tickets to New Mexico for Sunday afternoon. Cam, however, was having last-minute jitters; she'd spread the bear fur on the guest bed so that Charlie's parents, used to the warmer temperatures of the New Mexico desert, wouldn't feel the cold snap of western New York in November.

Charlie himself was enjoying it; he'd never liked the dry heat of the desert, and the cool dampness of the reservation here was wonderful. He didn't have a problem with the idea of living here with Cam; it would be wonderful, to wake up beside her every morning for the rest of their lives, to enjoy the change of seasons, to help her and her village every year. A simple, idyllic life; he was going to treasure the idea of living here when they got out of the Army.

And when he picked his parents up from the airport and started back toward the reservation with them, even his father was impressed by the beauty. "It's hard to see now with the leaves gone, but there's a beautiful color show in fall," Charlie said happily as he took the winding highway beside Lake Erie. "Red and yellow and brown offset against the dark green of the pines and evergreens. I told Cam I could retire here after we get out of the army, I wouldn't mind living up here for the rest of my life."

"So what kind of girl is she?" His mother abruptly changed topic, focusing on what was, to her, the more important issue. "You came home for a brief visit earlier this year, something about this girl soldier in trouble with immigration."

Charlie quietly told his parents about the events of the last few months, starting with Hawk's SERE training and ending with his decision to let Cam and Charlie take some leave time. "It's been a really rough four or five months for her, and she really did need some time to unwind, although I can't say that our time here has been uneventful." He then proceeded to tell them about Cam's past, and her emotionally stressing trip to the scene of the fire the week before.

By the time he was done he saw horror and sympathy on his mother's face and anger and determination on his father's. "No one should have to go through something like that. No one. I'm proud of you for sticking by her, son. I know it can't have been easy, she's carrying a lot of baggage—"

Charlie pulled over to the side of the road so he could look his Dad in the eye seriously. "That was actually why I brought you here, not only to celebrate Thanksgiving and meet her, but because I intend on marrying her and settling down here with her once we leave the Army. I don't know when that will be. I don't know how long we'll stay in. I don't know how long this classified project is going to last; the way the economy is going, they're looking at budget cuts and I don't know if our project is going to get the axe. I've been with this project for so long now that I can't imagine not being a part of it, and if they disband the Joes, well, my time in the military might be shorter than I thought. However, I do know one thing; I love Cam, and I want to marry her, and where she goes, I will be there too."

"This is awfully sudden, Charlie," his father said doubtfully. "You've only known her for the fall, and she's been in trouble for the entire time you've known her. I know you always had a soft spot for the underdog, wanting to help those in trouble, and it was partly that reason I thought you joined the Army, but are you sure you're ready for this big a step? You've never even been in a really serious relationship before."

"I'm sure," Charlie said firmly, and he knew by the look on his father's face that his tone had just convinced him. He'd never been that serious about a girl, ever. "She's Iroquois, and a medicine woman in training, so she's fairly high-status in her own right. Part of the tradition among her people is that when a woman wants to get married, the female relatives of the bride and the female relatives of the groom get together and discuss the suitability of the match, and only if everyone is agreed that it would be a good thing is the marriage then allowed to take place. So while you're here you'll have to talk to Jennifer Aiennatha, Cam's clan-sponsor, teacher, and substitute mother, and discuss whether you agree to Cam and I getting married."

"And if I say no?" Charlie's mother folded her arms in mock belligerence.

Charlie grinned. "We'd still get married anyway. But I'm a medicine man, and she's a medicine woman-in-training, and we both understand that traditions need to be upheld and form must be followed. And I really do want you to meet her. I think you'll like her, Mom." He resumed driving. "A couple of weeks ago we were hiking when a bear surprised us and mauled my leg. Cam got me home, stitched me up, and took care of me until it healed—the stitches actually only came out a few days ago. But she did a good job."

"Hmmph. I'll be the judge of that when we get home and I can take a look at it." But his mother looked slightly mollified.

She looked even happier when they pulled up in front of Cam's cottage and she saw the neat little single-story house. "This is it?" she said. "It looks…cozy."

"We have a guest bedroom for you to stay in while you're here." Charlie got out and headed for the back of the Jeep, where he'd stashed the groceries—there were a few last-minute things Cam had said she wanted.

His dad was getting the last couple of bags out of the back when the front door opened and Cam came out. Charlie almost started laughing and had to smother it with difficulty; she had put on a dress for the occasion, and he had to admit that while it did look nice on her, that was absolutely the first time he'd ever seen her put one on. She was really trying to make an impression on his parents. "Come on in, Mr. Ironknife, Mrs. Ironknife," she said quickly. "You must be tired. Are these your bags?" She started to pick up his mother's bag, but Charlie's Dad stopped her.

"I can handle our bags," he said kindly. "If I'm right, that smells like dinner in there cooking and if you leave it too long you'll ruin the flavor. Baked chicken?"

Charlie sniffed. "Smells like it might be burning a little."

"Oh! I forgot to turn the heat down!" And Cam fled inside.

Charlie's mother looked a little doubtfully after her, but his Dad was chuckling as he picked up his bag in one hand and Charlie grabbed his mother's. "Just jitters at meeting the parents the first time. She reminds me of your mother when we first met."

"How so?" Charlie asked, then wondered if his mother could kill his father with a simple look.

Charlie's Dad just grinned. "I'll tell you over dinner." Then, as he took in Charlie's Mom's look, he chuckled a little and amended, "Maybe." He hefted the bag. "So where's the guest room? We'd like to freshen up a bit and drop our bags off."

"This way." Charlie led the way, followed by his Dad and Mom, and they headed in through the family room, down the hall, and into Cam's studio. They'd taken down the mirrors—they were, after all, held onto the wall with small clamps, and it had been a matter of unscrewing those and taking the sheets of glass down and storing them in the back of their closet until his parents were gone.

They put their bags down and Charlie's father looked around. "Very cozy. I can see you happy here, son." He turned to Charlie's mother. "Myra—"

But she wasn't there. Even as they looked at each other in confusion the smell of burned food got very strong indeed, and moments later Charlie heard Cam's aggrieved wail. "I ruined it!"

Both men headed for the kitchen at a run. Charlie got there first, and stopped short at the scene. By the time his father got there two steps behind him, he was sagging against the wall laughing so hard he was gasping for breath. And when his Dad got there, he started laughing too.

Cam had bent over the oven when she opened it to get the chicken, in its roasting pan, out. The hem of the dress had touched the edge of the hot oven door and there was now a large scorch mark on the front of the dress.

And the chicken looked badly burned.

"I ruined it. I ruined dinner and I ruined the dress." Cam looked at Charlie, her eyes wide with distress. "I'm so sorry, I ruined everything for your parents, I wanted it to be perfect…"

Charlie couldn't even breathe, he was laughing so hard. Beside him, his father was in a similar state.

Myra Ironknife surveyed her husband and her son with compressed lips, hands on her hips. Finally figuring that her obvious annoyance with them wasn't going to produce a coherent response out of either one, she shook her head. "Men."

Charlie and his Dad just laughed harder.

Myra turned to Cam. "Ignore them. They can't help it, they're men. Let me see that dress, sweetie."

"I don't have many dresses. I never have a chance to dress up. I wanted to look nice for you." Cam sounded woebegone as she looked at the large scorch mark on the skirt. "I'm sorry I ruined everything—"

"Oh, you didn't ruin anything, honey, you didn't have to get dressed up for us, we're family. The dress can be replaced, and some of that chicken might still be salvageable. Tell you what, you just step over those two _children_ sitting there in the doorway and go get changed and when you get back we'll see what we can do about dinner." Cam nodded and headed for the bedroom.

She was dressed in jeans and a t shirt when she got back to the kitchen, and Myra had the carving knife out. "There, you see, it's just the skin that's scorched, the meat underneath is still good. Grab that plate over there and I'll carve the slices while you hold the plate."

Charlie and his Dad finally swallowed down the last of their laughter and stood up. "Uh uh," Myra gestured them to the table. "You two can just go sit there and behave yourselves." Since she was gesturing to the kitchen table with the hand that held a rather large carving knife, both men decided they'd be wise to listen to her instructions.

In rather less time that Charlie had thought, his mother had the kitchen organized and the food sitting on the table in large steaming dishes. They all sat down and Charlie's Dad said a short grace, then they started to help themselves to the various serving dishes on the table.

"So, Dad, you said that Cam reminds you of Mom?"

"Yeah," and no one could miss the mischievous glint in Jimmy Ironknife's eyes. "The first time she met my parents—your grandparents—she was trying to make a good impression on them and she nearly burned the kitchen down. If I remember we had to replace the stove."

Charlie stared at him Mom, who glared at his Dad across the table. The staring contest was broken by a smothered giggle from Cam. The giggle broke Charlie's determination not to laugh at him Mom, and soon both he and Cam were laughing. Myra's face finally cracked into a reluctant smile, and moments later all four were laughing.


	19. Chapter 10: Clan Negotiations

**Chapter 10: Clan Negotiations**

"Jennifer? I brought a guest to meet you."

"Don't you all ever lock doors around here?" Myra asked Cam incredulously as Cam pushed open the door to Jennifer's cabin with just a token tap.

"Um, not really," Cam shrugged. "We all know each other up here, everybody knows everyone else, few people even come up here because they know this is reservation land and we're pretty good at terrifying the locals into staying off the reservation, so there's not really a need to lock doors. Added to that, Jennifer is the medicine woman and no one in their right mind intrudes on the house of a medicine woman. Never anger the doctor; you never know when you're going to need her."

Myra chucked at that. "That I'll agree with. Okay, let me meet this Jennifer of yours."

"Jennifer? It's Cam, I brought someone here to meet you."

From somewhere in the back of the house Jennifer's voice spoke. "I'm back here in the sunroom. Come on back. I'm just making some more of the mullein paste we used on Charlie's leg."

Cam led Myra through the house and into the sunroom. It was always warm here, a result of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the south side of the house and let in lots of natural sunlight.

Jennifer looked up and smiled warmly at Myra. "Please feel free to pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable. I'll just be a few more minutes."

And true to her word moments later she put aside the flask with the now-cooling decoction, and gave Myra her full attention. "So you're Charlie's mother."

"Yes. And you're Cam's."

Jennifer looked momentarily sad. "I wish I were, truly, her mother. She would have been spared a lot of grief and a lot of heartache."

"And if she had been spared that, then she wouldn't be the young woman you know today, the young woman my son has fallen in love with and wants to marry." Myra said wisely. "While I have no doubt that there are some experiences in her memory that she wishes she didn't carry around, I can't argue with the fine young woman she's become."

"Neither can I. Has Charlie told you about her past?" Neither woman noticed when Cam slipped out of the room; it was against tradition for the prospective bride to be in the room while clan negotiations were taking place.

"He did. He told me about her childhood, her father, and her upbringing as a child of the People; he told me about the accident her father had with his plane that ended with her having to leave Osan, and go to live in New York. He told me she was studying to be a dancer before her Aunt and Uncle's plans ruined all her dreams for her. And," Myra swallowed hard, "He didn't tell me everything about the three years she spent as their captive up here, but he told me enough for me to understand that it was a miracle she didn't go insane. She was incredibly brave to have sneaked out and set the fire, and it was a miracle that she survived it and found you. Charlie also told me it was thanks to your skill that she lived, that if it hadn't been for you she wouldn't have made it."

"It might have been my skill, but she was extraordinarily courageous and Someone must have plans for her to have kept her alive. She didn't walk away unscathed, she was badly burned and thanks to the scarring from that fire and the internal injuries she sustained while she was held captive by her aunt and uncle, she's never going to be able to have children. And if you're going to be okay with her marrying your son, you'll have to accept that you aren't going to have grandkids."

Myra heaved a sigh. "While I can't say I'm happy with it, I do have to say that I have never seen my son this happy with another woman. He has had girlfriends, but no serious relationships and never one that he felt this strongly about, so I'm willing to accept that I won't have grandkids if it means that he'll ultimately be happy. And it doesn't mean that she can't adopt at some point too, right?"

Jennifer broke into a grin. "Absolutely. And Cam and Charlie would make a great Mom and Dad, I can see it already. So, you don't have any objections to Cam marrying Charlie?"

"None at all. Do you have any objections to my son marrying your daughter?"

Jennifer grinned again. "Absolutely none. After what she's been though, I'll agree to practically anything if it means that she's going to be happy. And your son—she glows when he's around, and she looks lost when he isn't. He's been playing his flute outside their house practically every night."

"Playing his flute?" Myra looked confused.

"When one of the Hadenosaunee decides to court another, he or she plays a courting flute outside the home of the chosen to express an interest. Charlie plays his flute outside her bedroom window practically every night. And I think he uses it to soothe her when she has nightmares—she wakes up screaming some nights."

"After what she's been through I don't wonder." Myra looked saddened.

"The first nightmare she had when they first got here—it was about three nights after they arrived—I heard her screaming, and I started to get up and go to her house. I didn't know if Charlie knew about her past, or how much of it he knew, or how he'd react to her nightmares—but I stopped outside because I heard him wake her up by singing to her. It calmed her enough for him to wake her gently, and when she started crying he just folded her in his arms and rocked her like a child. It was the tenderest, gentlest thing I'd ever seen any man do for her, and that was when I decided that if she said they wanted to marry I wouldn't stand in her way. Her relationship with Charlie is so totally different than with Adam."

"Adam?" Myra quizzed.

"Charlie didn't tell you about Adam?"

"No, he didn't. Who is Adam?"

"Adam was with the tribe here in the village for a while when Cam was twenty one. His parents were Iroquois, but they lived out in Ohio and he wanted to come live here on the reservation. So he stayed with a family here, some distant relatives of his mother's, but since they had a large family of their own, their house was rather crowded. When Adam started to show an interest in Cam, helping her break ground for her garden, helping her with seeds and planting, we were all relieved. The crowding in his mother's family's house would be easier, and Cam…" Jennifer sighed. "Cam had a crush on him. He was a handsome boy, but she couldn't see what I saw; pretty face on the outside, but absolutely shallow and not a drop of sense and decency on the inside. We told him repeatedly that if he was going to go out of his way to help her out it mean he was interested and he shouldn't let her continue to think that if he wasn't…but he didn't listen to us, and he didn't say anything to her even when she started playing her flute outside his house. She was absolutely head-over-heels for him, had a huge crush, and she said it didn't matter if she couldn't have sex with him as man and woman, she would find some way of satisfying him. And I knew, with the three years she's spent as a sex slave, she was perfectly capable of keeping him happy. Finally one day his family matriarch and I sat down and discussed it and we decided that if both of them were serious we would go ahead and give them our okay even though I knew deep down inside that she wasn't going to be really happy with him for long.

"Fortunately they never got to that point. The moment we told both of them our decision Adam exploded. Told us he couldn't believe we were going to 'saddle him with a misshapen, deformed ugly—"

"Oh no he didn't!" Myra was outraged.

Jennifer nodded. "—frigid half-woman' who would never be able to bear him a son, and that he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life with her, and couldn't imagine anyone ever wanting to tie themselves down to her. He said in front of us and Chief Andy that she was good enough with her mouth in bed but he couldn't even bear to see her with her clothes off so how we could expect him to marry her was beyond him."

"That son of a bitch," Myra glowered. "How could he say that to her? In front of the Chief, and you, and his own relatives? That was something very personal and private and didn't need to be aired."

"No, it didn't. I have never seen Chief Andy so furious before. He told Adam that he never ever wanted to see him again, to never set foot over his doorstep, and if he was wise he would take himself out of the village altogether. Which Adam did the next day."

"At least he got the hint."

"Yes, he did, but the damage was done. Cam ran out of my house crying, went to her own, packed a backpack and disappeared into the forest. When she's upset she'll do that, go off on her own and be with the land, but she usually came back after a day or so. This time, even though we sent out hunting parties for her, she didn't come back for two weeks. We had been worried that maybe she committed suicide, or she fell off a cliff or a ravine or something, but she was fine when she came back. She just said she was going to go into the military like her Dad did, and could I keep an eye on her house for her. And a week later she was gone.

"And then a month ago she comes back and she has Charlie. And I could see and feel right away that she's different. She's so much more relaxed, she laughs more, she's more open, she's…she's alive, now. And I realize that while she was in the Army she had some sort of surgical procedure done that restored some function to her body, enough that she and Charlie can enjoy making love like any two normal people, but it's more than just that, it's…it's like something was missing from her and she found it in Charlie."

"I understand," Myra said quietly. "I understand because I see it in my son. Charlie is…different…with her. I haven't seen him this happy, this content, with any other woman. And on that basis alone I would say yes to their getting married."

"So should we tell the lovebirds?"

"Actually, since today is Thanksgiving, it's tradition that tonight the entire village gathers for a big bonfire. Andy usually stands and says a few words about giving thanks for another year together, giving thanks to the Earth Mother for her bounty and her favor, that sort of thing. I think this year he can finish off that speech with an engagement announcement. It would be…fitting."

Myra grinned. "I'm looking forward to it."

They all ended up sitting around the bonfire that evening, she with her hand in Jim's, Charlie with his hand in Cam's. They both kept casting worried glances at her, but she kept her best poker face on, determined not to give the secret away; but it was a strain, and it was almost a relief when Chief Andy Lightfeather finally stood up.

"And so we gather together here again, as we do every Thanksgiving. It's a time for celebration, of giving thanks that we are all here together, and this year we have so much to be thankful for; our beloved daughter of the People, Cameron Arlington, is back with us after several mishaps and a set of circumstances that could, if they'd gone another way, so easily have resulted in her spending time in prison instead of here. It is thanks to her friend, Charlie Ironknife of the Dine Navajo that she is here with us at this moment. Also joining us is Jim and Myra Ironknife of the Dine Navajo, and unless I miss my guess, soon to become relatives of the tribe in their own right, for I was told this afternoon by Jennifer Aiennatha that she and Myra Ironknife have concluded the clan negotiations and have hereby granted permission for their children Charlie Ironknife and Cameron Arlington to marry."

Applause, whoops, and cheers exploded around the bonfire, and in the midst of it, Cam stood, blushing furiously. Charlie dropped her hand and started to run to Andy's shop for the courting basket he'd made, but Andy was there, smiling, holding out the first of the three baskets he'd made; the courting basket. Charlie gave him a smile of thanks as he turned back to the fire and held the basket ou wordlessly to Cam.

"I…oh…" Cam knew the gesture, even if the greater number of the tribe didn't.

Those who did quickly whispered to those who didn't, and soon the chant started around the bonfire. "Accept! Accept!"

"Of course I'm accepting," Cam scoffed as she took the basket from Charlie's hands. "Charlie, this is beautiful…" She looked at it for a moment more, then carefully put it down on the ground and threw her arms around him. "Of course I'll marry you, silly," she said happily to him just before her lips claimed his.


	20. Chapter 11: Wedding

**Chapter 11: Wedding**

Absolutely no one felt like going back to their houses for separate Thanksgiving dinners afterwards, so Charlie and Jimmy ended up helping the men of the tribe bring out long tables, set them up at one end of the large central open area, and the women of the village started bringing dishes of steaming food from their houses as well as all the plates and tableware they could find, setting them on the tables for everyone to help themselves, buffet-style. There was an air of community, of everyone helping each other, and even Jimmy Ironknife felt it as he approached Charlie standing at the buffet table carving slices from a huge turkey someone had brought. "I actually like this, it's all communal, no one is more important that anyone else."

"Yes, it is nice here. I do like it and I'm looking forward to retiring here." Charlie nodded to the second plate his father held. "Is that for Mom?"

"Yes. Although I doubt that she's even noticing the food at the moment," and he nodded with a smile to the tight group of women clustered around Cam at the moment. Half of them seemed to be examining the basket she held and Charlie's mother was explaining the significance of some of the basketweaving techniques and patterns Charlie had used; the other half of them were only half listening as they excitedly planned Cam's wedding for her.

Cam herself was looking a little dazed, so after cutting slices from the white portion of the turkey and adding stuffing and gravy and vegetables to both plates, Charlie approached her. The women, sensing that the newly-engaged couple wanted some time alone, discreetly withdrew to the tables for their own helpings as Charlie and Cam wandered to a large rock at one end of the central square and sat down with their plates. "Are you all right, sweetheart?" he asked her.

"I…yeah, it's just…it's a lot to take in." She poked at her turkey with a fork. "Charlie…are you sure you…um…really want to marry me?"

"Of course I'm sure, Cam." He put his plate down, tilted her chin up until she met his eyes. "I've never met anyone like you; I've never met anyone who makes me as happy as you make me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, right here beside you."

She smiled. "That's good, because I do too." She sighed. "Now…when?"

That was even more of a complicated question. "You know, sweetheart, I really don't know. There are a lot of people here who would love to see you married—Andy and Jennifer mostly—but there are people back at base who would love to see us married too; Clayton and Allie and Shana and Frank and everyone else, and there's the Hammonds to consider; I know you're still close and they should be invited at least. The logistics of getting everyone together are—difficult."

"I have a solution if you're open to suggestion." She peeked at him shyly from under her lowered eyelashes.

"Absolutely."

"We get married twice. Once, here, a Native American wedding for the Native half of our heritage and everyone that belongs to that. And then we get married again at some point for all the—non-Native—people we know."

He thought about that as he chewed a piece of fried potato. "That will work," he said, relief evident in his voice. "So when do you want to do it?"

For answer she put her plate down on the ground, got up, and headed over to talk to Andy and Jennifer, deep in conversation with Myra and Jim Ironknife. Jennifer broke off, stared at Cam, glanced at Charlie, then she and Myra laughed happily and headed for Cam's house. Andy and Jim headed straight for Charlie.

"Not lettin' any grass grow under our feet, are we, son?" Jimmy said, but there was warm approval in his eyes.

Charlie shrugged, but his eyes danced with laughter. "Cam decided. I figured I should get in some practice in just agreeing with her and letting her have her way, since I'm going to be doing plenty of that once we're married."

Andy howled in laughter and slapped Charlie's shoulder. "There you go, thinking like a married man already. So come on, let's get you dressed for this wedding."

Jimmy smiled at Charlie's befuddled look. "What, you didn't think you were going to be married wearing those jeans and t-shirt, did you?"

"I…don't have anything…"

"Yes, but we do. Come on over to my house, I think we can scare up something suitable." Andy led the way to his house.

Andy had a lot of what would be considered traditional Native American clothing—as a Chief, it would have made sense. Charlie watched as Andy dragged a large box from the back of a closet. "Is that…a military footlocker?"

"Staff Sergeant Andrew Lightfeather, US Army." Andy gave him a crisp military salute, then grinned at Charlie. "I had a life before you knew me. And when you and Cam get tired of playing soldier and want to settle down, remember that when Jennifer steps down, Cam'll be the medicine woman of the tribe and that means she gets to pick the chief."

The gears in Charlie's head ground to a halt. "I'm not Iroquois."

"We are all People, Charlie. And the Chief is not determined by blood but by an ability to make wise and fair decisions for every member of the tribe. I honestly don't think you'll have problems with that requirement. However," Andy said with mock ferocity, "That is not the issue right now, and you have years before I step down—and Cam has years before Jennifer does. Let's get you dressed."

From the chest Andy pulled a tunic made of deerskin, tanned soft and supple, beaded and decorated with quills and feathers in the finest example of craftsmanship Charlie had ever seen. 'I got married in these," Andy said. "Wife died of cancer a few years before Cam came to the tribe, and we never had kids, so I didn't have anyone to pass his on to. I think it's appropriate that it be passed along to you." He handed the tunic to Charlie. "Slip that on and see how it fits."

It was a little tight across the chest but Charlie figured if he moved carefully he shouldn't burst any seams or lose any of the beadwork. The matching trousers fit around the waist, but were a bit short in the leg; Charlie had a good couple inches on Chief Andy. "It'll be okay. No one will be looking at your feet," Jimmy said.

Andy got dressed in full ceremonial regalia. "I don't get to marry people that often, and it's always a pleasure," he said. "All right, let's go see if the womenfolk are ready."

When Cam, Jennifer and Myra emerged from Cam's house half an hour later Charlie couldn't take his eyes off her. Dressed in deerskin tunic and leggings, richly decorated in the same manner as the clothes he was wearing, she looked every inch like proper Native American bride even with the almond eyes of her Asian heritage. The crowd parted to let her through, and Charlie took her hand, squeezing it gently as he smiled at her.

Charlie would never remember afterward what was said. He couldn't take his eyes off her, standing there almost glowing in her ceremonial wedding garb; although he'd thought that she wasn't 'pretty' when he met her, he looked at her now and wondered how could have missed seeing how beautiful she was. He could hardly wait for the end of the ceremony and it was a huge relief when he could finally turn to her when Andy's speech was over and kiss her. The kiss deepened, lengthened, amid the cheering and laughter and applause of the rest of the village.

No one was paying any attention to the buffet tables, so it was a complete shock when they heard a low growl. Every head turned and stared in shocked disbelief.

A bear was standing on the other side of the table, snuffling at the food.

And it looked awfully familiar to Charlie. "Cam," he whispered softly. "Isn't that—"

"Yes, it is. It's the same bear that got you." She sounded grim; around them, people were stepping backward, backing up carefully, not wanting to arouse the bear's ire and get it to attack them.

"Are you sure?" Andy was whispering too; on the other side of him, Jennifer was standing with Charlie's parents, who were plainly unused to seeing bears this close; Charlie's mother looked completely terrified. Jennifer's coaxing got Myra Ironknife to start backing up slowly, step by step.

"Yes. The bear that got Charlie was kind of skinny, his fur kind of scraggly and matted. So is this one. Damn it, I knew there had to be something wrong with it when it attacked Charlie, I knew it!"

Slowly the members of the village were backing away from the bear and the tables of food, step by step, until they were all far enough away that the bear didn't view them as a threat anymore and focused its attention on the food-laden tables. At this point they all broke and ran for their houses; Cam grabbed Charlie's arm. "Go back to my house with your mother and father. And stay there."

"Cam!" He grabbed her arm as she started to stride away. "What are you going to do?"

She looked at him, and there was a fierce glow in the back of her eyes that reminded him that in addition to being his wife, she was an Iroquois brave and a soldier in the US Army. And reminded him that there was a bear fur on the guest bed. "As a brave of the village, Charlie, it's my responsibility to help protect it from all danger. Even from a sick bear."

He couldn't argue with that, so he headed for the house with her at a run. Once inside, he found Jennifer and his parents waiting for them; he stepped inside with Cam, waited as she headed for the closet that held spare coats as well as her weapons, and came out with a quiver full of arrows, a huge bow that looked too big for her tiny frame, and her twin-blade swords strapped to a holder on her back.

"What are you doing?' Myra Ironknife's voice shook as she took in the sight of her new daughter-in-law's weaponry. "You're not going out there with those to kill that!"

"It is tradition," Cam said, smiling gently at them. "Don't worry, we've hunted bear before. I've hunted bear before. This one's sick it won't be much of a fight. We'll be fine." And she vanished out the door.

Charlie, Jennifer, and his parents watched, hearts pounding, as Cam joined the stream of braves, mostly young men but a few women, as they circled the village square and the bear, feasting on the leftovers of the Thanksgiving meal. Charlie realized that this must not be the first time something like this had happened; the party of braves moved soundlessly, coordinating their movements through the shadows using a silent sign language that Charlie remembered Hawk telling them Cam had taught to her SERE class. Shana and Snake Eyes used a form of this, too, so it wasn't a surprise to him to find that some gestures were universal and he was understanding a bit of what they had planned.

A couple of braves were going to taunt the bear, leading it away from the tables and getting it into an open area; the plan, from there, was for Andy, standing quietly in the treeline to shoot it with the double-barreled shotgun he was holding in his hands. Charlie watched as the hunting party surrounded the bear, then Cam and two young braves stepped forward, into the bear's threat perimeter.

It roared at them. One of the braves backed up, but Cam stood firm, nocked an arrow to her bow and shot it. The arrow buried itself in the bear's shoulder, and it roared, rearing up on its hind legs as it swiped at the arrow protruding from its left shoulder; from where he stood Charlie could hear the wooden shaft snapping. She followed it up with another arrow, to the same place; when it dropped to all fours Charlie noticed that it held that left front paw slightly off the ground.

The other brave, the one that hadn't run, shot the next arrow; it looked like he was aiming for an eye, but it ended up just grazing the side of the bear's snout. That seemed to anger it, though, and it started to limp forward, its muzzle dripping blood from the graze. Cam and the other brave backed up steadily, shooting arrows into it, angering it enough so that it would chase them, while behind it, the rest of the hunting party closed in, preventing the bear from returning to the remains of the food.

"Why don't they just start shooting it?" his mother whispered from where she was standing next to Charlie's Dad.

Jennifer answered her. "At this close range, if any of the arrows miss they could break someone's window, or they could hit someone on the other side of the circle. The bear knows that they're there, and their presence will be a deterrent to keep it from running away. Cam and the brave standing there are supposed to lure the bear in close enough for Andy to drop it with one shot. Normally we would try to scare it away but Cam was right, it attacked Charlie because it was sick and if it gets away it'll spread that sickness. Best to kill it now before it becomes a danger to everyone and infects any of the other animals."

Cam had peppered it with five arrows now, and it was plainly angry. As the sixth arrow thudded home in its already-wounded shoulder, it roared and started a limping charge forward. Cam, now out of arrows, retreated toward Andy, and as she got within rifle range she shouted, "Now, Andy!"

Andy sighted down the barrel of the shotgun and pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.


	21. Chapter 12: Rogue

**Chapter 12: Rogue**

"Andy! Shoot it now!" There was an edge of panic to Cam's voice.

Andy yanked the trigger again. "It's jammed! It won't fire!" And that was all he had time to say. The bear was too close, he had to hurry to get out of the way. "Let it go!" he yelled to the ring of watching braves. "Let it go and we'll hunt it later!"

The braves started to step back, but the bear had other ideas. Fueled by the fever raging through its brain and enraged by the arrows Cam had shot into it, its world had focused, narrowed, to one thing; the girl who had shot it. Cam ran for the trail that would take it out of the village, then ducked sideways and doubled back; at that point, it should have seen the clear trail in front of it and run for the hills.

It was a measure of how sick the animal actually was when instead of making a run for the clear trail ahead, it turned to attack the source of its annoyance. Cam was out of arrows, and her bow was useless without them; Charlie screamed her name in terror as she turned and drew her swords, facing it with courage he wasn't sure he would have if it were him, and with stupidity that he was going to yell at her for later.

The bear lunged; she slid aside with the same grace and speed he'd seen her use when dancing and at the same time slashed at its nose as she went. It was a practiced move, one that he'd seen Shana and Snake Eyes employ many times when sparring with each other on the mat; however, this wasn't sparring and her swords were honed and deadly. The bear's nose was laid open; in the light from the bonfire, Charlie saw white bone gleaming from the bloody ruin.

It bellowed and rushed her again; she evaded again, but this time she brought both swords forward in front of her in a diagonal slashing motion as she went past. The bear roared, but it was a bellow of pure pain this time, and Charlie watched in disbelief as it sank to its injured left paw; she'd just sliced the muscles and tendons of its right front leg. As it struggled to regain its feet, she danced around the back of it and repeated the maneuver to its right rear leg, and this time it didn't rise; it couldn't with two legs hamstrung.

It was roaring now, in pain, and Charlie winced at the sound as he stepped away from the door and ran for the bedroom, grabbing his service revolver. Now that Cam had it immobilized, the small caliber should put it out of its misery fairly quickly.

But even as he came back to the front door the bellowing ceased abruptly; when he stared out the front door, he realized his afterthought wasn't really necessary. Cam was standing a few feet in front of the bear, one of her swords still in her hand; the other was lodged to the hilt in the bear's eye socket, where it had penetrated the brain and killed the animal instantly.

"She…threw it." Charlie's Dad sounded awed. "She got in front of it and grabbed her sword, and then she threw it like a spear. I thought for sure she was going to miss, I expected the bear to move its head at the last minute, but she…well, it's dead."

And the village was cheering as Cam raised her remaining sword high over her head, letting out a warrior's cry of triumph.

"How could you be so stupid?!" Charlie howled at her as she stepped in the front door. "Great Spirit, Cam, we just got married, you that desperate to leave me so soon?" And then he grabbed her and folded her into a tight hug.

Cam stared at him. "Charlie…what…"

"It's okay, he was just worried, Cam. Men get like that, especially Ironknife men." Myra grinned wickedly at the wounded look Jimmy and Charlie both shot her. "You'll get used to it."

Charlie rolled his eyes at his mother, then turned to Cam. "I just…wasn't expecting it. I'm glad you're okay, sweetheart, and that was a brave thing you did taking that bear on, but if I'd known that was what you were going to do I wouldn't have let you—" He broke off at his father's headshake and his mother's sigh. "What? What did I say?"

"'Let"?" Cam put her hands on her hips as Jimmy and Myra took their seats on the living room couch, leaving her to face her new husband alone. "You weren't going to 'let' me do what, Charlie Ironknife? I am a brave of this tribe as well as medicine woman, and as such I have responsibilities. You don't get to tell me what I can or can't do."

He held both hands up in surrender. "All right. I'm sorry for that choice of words. Let me rephrase that. If I'd known what you were going to do I would have advised you against it."

For a moment he thought she was going to find some fault with that wording too, but she suddenly sighed and sat down, and as she did so he noticed her hands were shaking, just a tiny bit. Adrenaline crash, he thought, and wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she leaned into his embrace. "Honestly, Charlie, if I'd known that was what I was going to do when this started I would have advised me against it, too. I just…when Andy's shotgun jammed all I could think of was to get the bear out of the village, and when he turned and started chasing me I just…reacted. You're right to be upset, it was a stupid thing to do, and I promise the next time something like this happens I'm not going to do something idiotic like that again." And now she really was shaking. "Goddess. That was close."

Charlie folded her in his arms and just held her, letting her feel the strength in his arms, the warmth of his body, the steady, even beat of his heart, until gradually her shaking lessened and her adrenaline level evened out. Jimmy and Myra seemed to understand, and Jimmy leaned forward, switched on the TV and muted it to a comfortable level, and found a comedy channel on. Laughing at the jokes finally calmed Cam down the rest of the way; once she seemed comfortable Jimmy Ironknife cleared his throat. "So what happens now?"

Cam leaned back. "Well, normally we use as much of it as possible—meat, fur, bone, and so on. However, because this one was sick—normally at this time of year the bears are holed up in their dens for the winter, and even when they are healthy or have delayed their winter sleep for whatever reason, few openly approach our villages the way this one did. We're not going to use the meat since it'll be tainted with whatever infected it, and the fur looked terrible—that was my second clue that there was something wrong with it. However, the claws and teeth could still be salvaged—they're used to make necklaces and souvenirs for tourists and visitors. So tomorrow morning we'll probably go out and salvage the teeth and claws and then Andy and a few of the others in the village with vehicles will probably get ropes around it and drag it out to the other side of the mountain and burn or bury it—if we just leave the carcass the sickness could spread."

"Sounds like a good plan. Do you get anything for killing the thing singlehandedly?" Jimmy grinned at her. "Because if you don't you should, that was…I've never seen anything like that before. I wouldn't have dared tackle that bear alone, and I can't think of anyone else who would be brave enough—or crazy enough—to do so."

"Normally if a brave kills the bear with traditional weapons the fur goes to the brave. But with this one obviously sick, I'm going to refuse—the fur was pretty badly matted and not worth the trouble anyway."

"Is that where the fur on our guest bed came from?" Myra's eyes were wide. "You've done this before?"

"Um. Yeah." Cam ducked her head, flushing.

"Wow." Myra and Jimmy were clearly impressed.

Cam shook her head. "It was a lucky shot, I shot one arrow straight into its mouth and it penetrated the back of the mouth and into the brain. Then the second one went into its eye. I would never be able to do that again if I tried. And it was a juvenile, probably hadn't met a bear hunter before and had no idea a human could kill it."

"It's still impressive," Jimmy grinned. "Okay, well, it's been a long day, and I'm sure you want to get some sleep—I know I got tired just watching you fight that bear." His grin got wider. "Heck of a way to spend your wedding night."

"Isn't it?" Charlie grinned and got up, hauling Cam upright with him. "Come on, let's go to bed."

He'd been worried about having his parents in the same house on their wedding night, but as he tucked a very sleepy Cam into her side of their bed he had to admit that he didn't feel much like engaging in physical activity, and he knew she wasn't either, so he lay down beside her with a sigh, stretched out fully, and grinned, then closed his eyes and was asleep in minutes.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep when a sudden quiet sound woke him. He lay awake for a moment, fuzzily wondering what had woken him up, when the sound came again and this time he identified it. Cam.

He rolled over and winced. When she was very tired or stressed she would have nightmares, and this time was no exception. She lay stretched out, stiff in bed, her arms up over her head, wrists crossed as though she were bound, and her face was twisted in pain. "Please…" the word was a harsh whisper.

"Cam. Baby, it's okay, you're home. Wake up, sweetheart," he laid a hand gently on her arm.

"Don't…don't hurt me…please!" she whimpered desperately, and out the corner of his eye he saw the door between their room and the guest bedroom open, and his parents stood there. He held up a hand to stop them from entering, then laid a finger on his lips for silence. His father nodded; his mother was staring at Cam writhing in anguish on the bed.

He knew from experience that she was lost in the dream and any touch would get sucked into it, so he opened his nighttable drawer and took out his flute. Cam was whimpering now, her wrists staying crossed on the pillow over her head but the rest of her body tensing and twisting urgently as the nameless, faceless specter in her nightmares hurt her, and when Charlie took a quick glance at his parents he saw his mother's eyes damp with tears and his father's face pale but his lips compressed with anger; not at Cam, but at whoever had done this to her.

Charlie placed the flute to his lips and started to play. A simple lullaby, sweet and clear. He'd learned early on that if he tried to wake her by touching her, the touch would be incorporated in her dreams; but the flute music, with its Native rhythms, was something that she'd never heard during her captivity in the cellar and so her mind would identify it as something coming from outside the dream world, and would start bringing her back to the here-and-now.

And sure enough, by the time he started on the third repetition of the lullaby her eyes flew open. She was gasping for breath as if she'd run a mile, and her eyes were haunted by dark memories, streaming with tears. "Charlie?" she whispered.

He put the flute down and wrapped his arms around her as she struggled to a sitting position, then slipped an arm across the small of her back and lifted her into his lap until she was sitting on his thighs, her face buried in his chest as she cried stormily. Though he usually didn't wear anything to bed when they were alone, this time he'd worn a t-shirt and boxers in deference to his parents' visiting presence, and her tears soaked into the front of his shirt, leaving dark patches.

He held her, rocked her, soothed her until her soft sobs gave way to exhausted sleep. He looked up several times, checking on his parents; the first time he looked up they were both silent and speechless; the next time he looked up, his mother had tears streaming down her cheeks. The next time he looked up, just as he'd decided that Cam was asleep and it was safe to put her down, they had retreated to their room and he could see them sitting on their bed.

He laid Cam down as soon as he knew she was now deeply asleep, past the level where dreams would bother her. She mumbled something unintelligible and curled up as he tucked the blankets around her shoulders, then smiled a little in her sleep as he kissed her cheek. Then he padded out of their bedroom to see his parents.

They weren't in their bedroom; he found them in the kitchen, sitting at the table, and they looked up as he walked in. "She never has these dreams more than once in a night, so you should be able to go to sleep now," he said quietly as he went to the stove, ran some water into the teakettle, and set it on to boil.

"I…I've never seen anything like that. Jesus, Charlie," His father ran a hand through his hair. "Do you do this every night?"

"Only the nights when she's stressed. The stress triggers her nightmares."

"Is it always that bad?" His mother whispered.

"It used to be worse. It's gotten better since she started counseling for her CPTSD." Charlie turned the stove off; he didn't want the sound of the kettle boiling to wake Cam, and the water was warm enough for a decent cup of tea now. "Tea?"

Charlie's father shook his head. "You go ahead, Myra," he told Charlie's mother. "I'm going to head on back to bed." And he left them in the kitchen quietly talking.


	22. Chapter 13: Forever

**Chapter 13: Forever**

Charlie and his Dad joined Chief Andy and the rest of the village in helping to dispose of the bear carcass the next day.

As Cam had predicted, the fur was useless; matted, tangled, and dirty, staring and unkempt, it wasn't worth keeping. The long, curved claws were carefully harvested, however, and left to dry in Andy's shop; so were the teeth. Then they tied ropes around the bear's legs and tied them off to the bumpers of Charlie's jeep and one of the other villagers' 4x4, and they towed the dead bear out of the village, high up into the mountains to a small cave. The cave had a large boulder rolled in front of it; not enough to obscure the opening but enough so that nothing could get in and eat the contaminated bear; when Charlie helped two other men roll the boulder back he saw the litter of bear bones within; one of the other braves explained. "We leave them to decompose here naturally when we find one that's sick so the sickness doesn't spread, and so that we have a supply of bone for various projects later, like carved bone handles for canes and the like. We don't waste anything."

Charlie helped them roll the bear carcass into the cave and the boulder back over the opening, then they all returned to the village. By afternoon more food had been prepared , and that evening the feasting and celebration picked up where it left off the previous evening, this time without the interruption of a rogue bear!

Saturday a group of the village women elected to carpool to Buffalo to go shopping, and Charlie and his father spent most of the day helping Chief Andy and the other males of the village prepare their houses for the winter. Extra caulking around doors and windows, nailing down loose shingles and roofing material, replacing shingles and siding where necessary, and at the end of the day Andy offered his help to Jimmy and Charlie to get Cam's house ready. "How long are y'all going to stay?" he asked.

"General Hawk said to be back at the beginning of the New Year."

"So you're going to spend the holidays with us. Wonderful." Andy grinned. "Really making yourself at home with us, huh?"

Charlie grinned. "I realize I'm not technically a member of your tribe—"

Andy interrupted him. "Of course you are. You married our future medicine woman, that makes you part of the tribe. And your parents, too. All are welcome."

"Really?" Jimmy paused, looking seriously at Chief Andy. "Because Myra and I were thinking about moving."

Charlie stared at his father open-mouthed. Andy raised an eyebrow. "From what I understand, you are one of the desert tribes. What makes you want to move? Especially up here, where we have harsh winters with a lot of snow?"

"I'll admit Myra isn't too thrilled about the snow part. She hates cold. But here is as good a place as any. Life is difficult where we are now, and many of our tribe are moving. There are many who see the color of skin and jump to conclusions, and those conclusions are a violation of everything we believe. Some are determined to wait it out, thinking it will get better but many are moving."

Andy thought for a moment, then pushed his hat back on his head. "Cameron is part of our tribe. You, as her parents by marriage, are now also a member of our tribe and Myra Ironknife can hold property in her own right. If you choose to move here you will be welcome. If we do not have a home in which you can live we can build you one—I have no doubt Cam would let you live in her house until it is done. I am Chief and my word is law unless the headwoman of the tribe chooses to remove me from my position, and somehow," his lips quirked in a smile, "I doubt very much that she would do so at this point. So if you want to move here, be welcome."

"Thank you. I'll talk to Myra about it."

After Andy left Charlie turned to his Dad. "Are you serious?"

"I am serious. One of the People was stopped on his way back to the reservation by police officers, who checked his license and registration, then asked about his citizenship. He gave the officer his tribal registration card, which the officer clamed was fraudulent and arrested him. He was not given an opportunity to call his wife or anyone else; she found him when she went to the police station to file a missing persons report when he didn't come home. When she found out what he was being held for, she produced his birth certificate and the chief of their tribe to confirm his registration. It is a very, very different place now that it was when Myra and I chose to settle on the reservation and had you, and those changes are not for the better, and we have decided that we don't want to live there anymore."

That evening over the dinner table Charlie, Jimmy, Myra and Cam discussed it. "Of course you can live here until they have a home for you," Cam said, smiling. "It'll be nice to have family that close. When are you moving?"

"We haven't decided we're actually moving yet," Myra objected.

"Well, just know that if you do decide, you're welcome to live here. Don't forget, I was in that deportation camp in Otero County, I know what it was like and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." Cam's eyes were haunted, and Myra and Jimmy nodded soberly—they remembered what Charlie had told them about her brush with immigration.

The rest of the weekend passed uneventfully, and Sunday afternoon when Charlie's parents packed up their things to leave it was with real regret. Myra and Cam hugged, crying, promising to write each other emails and letters, and then they were gone.

When Charlie came back from dropping his parents off at the airport he found Cam sitting on their bed looking slightly lost. "Having them around kind of felt like family," she said to Charlie. "I know they were only here for four days but it felt so comfortable, like this was how it was supposed to be, and now they're gone, and suddenly the house just seems…emptier."

"Well, it's not empty now, I'm home."

"Is this home or is the base home? I'm not sure anymore." She sounded unsure of herself, suddenly.

He cuddled up next to her in bed as he turned out the light. Lying skin-to-skin, with nothing if sexual desire in the contact, was the most wonderful feeling in the world, and he told her that. "Cam, I don't care. This is a house. It's our house yes, but it's a house. And the base, while it may have been home for a while, is also just base. Home, for me, now and for the rest of my life, is going to be right here with you. Forever."

He felt her sleepy smile against his chest. "Home is wherever you are too."

"Forever?" he asked her quietly.

"Forever," she snuggled happily against him as they drifted into sleep.

**Author's Note: All right, that's it for this one. Thanks for sticking with the story thus far, we're right about halfway through. Thanks for taking this little side-trip with me; I know it seemed like we were digressing from the Joes, but I promise the next book, we're definitely getting back on track. It's called GI Joe: Secrets, and the first three chapters will go up concurrently to this one, and there are going to be some major life-changing events for many of our favorite Joes. I put this novelette in here because understanding the relationship Charlie and Cam have developed is going to be absolutely critical to the next two books…er, three.**

**So look for GI Joe: Secrets! And thanks for reading!**


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